China’s new cross-strait action plan includes inviting Taiwanese to engage in “long stay” visits in China’s first-tier cities, living with selected Chinese families in an attempt to forge grassroots friendships. The Chinese authorities will also continue to encourage Taiwanese to study and work in China.

During Xi's visit here in U.S., the U.S. Department of State announced new private sector pledges and events in support of the 100,000 Strong Initiative, which seeks to increase the number and diversify the composition of Americans studying in China.

Signaling a sharp change of course in the country’s largest international cultural exchange program, the State Department has banned a leading sponsor company from bringing foreign students to the United States for summer jobs and will add new restrictions to protect students from labor abuse, officials said Wednesday.

A group of senior U.S. coaches and sports administrators will visit Afghanistan in February to conduct training and mentoring for Afghan sports officials as part of a sports diplomacy effort co-sponsored by the International Security Assistance Force and the U.S. Embassy.

Odeke and three other Ugandan basketball coaches were part of a delegation visiting UCLA on the back end of a cultural exchange tour of the United States that included a stop at the Basketball Hall of Fame ...The U.S. State Department helped fund the project, which was conceived by Texas Tech sports science professor Jens Omli, the trip's promoter and the founder of International Sport Connection.

“The basketball games are incidental [to] this,” said Cooley. “It’s the cultural exchange.” In each of the previous cities, the Nanyang Model High team stayed with host families. Along with private training sessions and games, the team has mixed in plenty of sightseeing, including Niagara Falls, Smithsonian museums, and D.C. monuments.

...Celebration of US-China Friendship...in Atlanta, Georgia. The show, co-sponsored by the Chinese Consulate General in Houston and the city of Atlanta, "is a wonderful example of the cultural and people-to-people exchanges necessary to build closer ties between the Chinese and American people," Carter said.

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs has announced that 100 students from Pakistan are participating in the Global Undergraduate Exchange Program’s (Global UGRAD-Pakistan) arrival orientation in Washington, D.C.