CGTN America Releases: A Friendship with Roots in Agriculture
For a more intimate portrait of China's president, we invite you to watch "A Friendship with Roots in Agriculture." President Xi Jinping visited the farm owned by Iowan Rick Kimberley in 2012 – an encounter that began an enduring friendship.
WASHINGTON, June 2, 2022 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- For a more intimate portrait of China's president, we invite you to watch "A friendship with roots in agriculture." President Xi Jinping visited the farm owned by Iowan Rick Kimberley in 2012 – an encounter that began an enduring friendship.
Then Vice President Xi charmed his hosts. "And we were just in discussion here, talking," Rick Kimberley recalls, "just like if you're with your best friend." A year later, Xi Jinping would be president of the People's Republic of China – one of the two largest economies on earth.
Their warm exchange on a chilly February day serves as a reminder of the friendly ties between China and the U.S. that have withstood their sometimes-turbulent geopolitics. The story shows Xi Jinping as Iowans came to know him on his first trip to their state 27 years ago – down-to-earth, gracious … kind.
In 1985, as a young Party Secretary from Zhengding County, Hebei Province, Xi led a five-person delegation there to study farming techniques. He created bonds in the town of Muscatine that would last a lifetime – friendships rooted in the soil, and soul, of Iowa.
Xi returned to Iowa in 2012, visiting Rick Kimberly on his mega-farm in Maxwell, a two-and-a-half-hour drive west of Muscatine.
Concerned about enhancing China's food security, Xi went to Maxwell to observe Kimberley's agribusiness – industrial-scale, high-tech farming. The average plot of farmland in China is less than 0.5 hectares. Kimberly grows 1,600 hectares (4,000 acres) of soybeans and corn, while employing just three people.
The farm produces enough grain to fill nine 16-meter-high bins that hold around 65,000 bushels or 1,650 metric tonnes of corn each. Kimberley said Xi asked how long he stored the grain and how he maintained optimal temperatures. "What was surprising to me was how knowledgeable President Xi was about agriculture," Kimberley said.
Today, you can visit the 13,330-hectare "China-U.S. Friendship Demonstration Farm" – a.k.a., the "Friendship Farm – in Luanping County in Hebei province, northeast of Beijing.
Something that Rick Kimberley keeps in a satin-lined box back home in Iowa symbolizes these ties as much as the Friendship Farm in Hebei. It is a cherished gift from Xi Jinping – a vase engraved with Chinese characters that say: "If the family lives in harmony, all affairs will prosper."
Kimberley believes this gift says a lot about its giver – his friend, Xi Jinping.
Click here to watch "A friendship with roots in agriculture"
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Media Contact
Zeng Siwei, CGTN America, 1 202-393-1850, [email protected]
SOURCE CGTN America
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