Working toward better US-China relations

Liu Yawei was a university freshman in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi province, when China and the United States announced the establishment of diplomatic relations in December 1978. It was such a dramatic event that its vividness stayed fresh in his memory.

"Waking up in the morning, we were quite surprised by the news. We never dreamed of having a relationship with the very 'enemy' we tried to destroy for years," said Liu, director of the China Program at the Carter Center and an adjunct professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

He had no inkling that because of that announcement, years later he would go to the US to study, and one day he would end up working for former US president Jimmy Carter, the man who signed the normalization agreement and decided to accept Chinese students to US universities in a midnight call from Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.