Carter honored for China relations work

Mary Ann Peters, CEO of the Carter Center, said the US-China relationship today goes well beyond government relationships.

"Chinese and American people interact with each other more than ever before and through travel, business and education, to name a few," she said. "These relationships help to anchor the official relationship, and we hope they will help to weather current tensions."

David Firestein, inaugural president and CEO of the George H. W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations, said Carter was the foundation's "unanimous choice" to be the first ever recipient of the award.

"Many of us here today are alarmed, as President Bush was, at the increasing shrillness and anger that we now hear in the rhetoric about China, in some US elite circles," Firestein said. "President Bush held the view that anger did not make for good policy."

"President Carter's recent exhortation that the United States and China should 'build their futures together' is as George H. W. Bush-like a sentiment on China as I have ever heard expressed by a former US president," he said. "Our nation would be wise to heed this sound advice."