During his trip to the United States in November 2023, Xi announced that China is ready to invite 50,000 young Americans to China for exchange and study programs in the next five years.

With Xi's support, more than 20 Muscatine High School students visited Beijing, Shanghai and Hebei province on Jan 24-30. On Jan 28, just before the end of their trip, the American students wrote a letter to express their joy and gratitude to Xi for the invitation.

In his reply, Xi said "seeing is believing", encouraging the Muscatine High School students to revisit China and encouraging more young American people to come to China.

"Some of our sister schools have invited us back on some trips," Fridley told Xinhua. "As we get invited, we're gonna have plans to take kids along to China, and then we want to invite Chinese students and families and teachers back to Muscatine, Iowa."

As a token of thanks, American students sang a song specially composed for the friendship between China and Muscatine in Chinese at the reception.

On learning of Xi's reply to their letter, "my students were all very excited," Guo Qianyu, a Chinese language teacher at the school, told Xinhua.

The January China trip is "eye-popping." "Many students ask me, 'can I come again?' 'can we stay longer?'," Guo said. During their stay in China, the American students exchanged WeChat with their Chinese peers, hoping to keep in touch.