VOA News | Thursday, February 8, 2024 
Iowa High School Students Visit China on Invitation of Xi Jinping

Muscatine, Iowa — Muscatine, Iowa, High School student Cole Loos had never traveled beyond the United States when the question put before him in January was, “Would you like to go to China?” “I was lucky I had my passport to go,” Loos explained to VOA. The invitation, he learned, wasn’t for a date in the distant future. If he and 24 other students from his high school were to make the trip, they had less than 10 days to commit and prepare to fly. “It was very spontaneous,” Loos said. Spontaneous, but by no means an accident. In 1985, Sarah Lande hosted a group from China visiting Muscatine for several days on an agricultural research tour of the United States. One of the participants was Xi Jinping, now president of the People’s Republic of China. Then, Xi was party committee secretary of Zhengding County, Hebei Province. Lande helped organize his stay in Muscatine. “Good things happen when you are a good friend to people, I guess,” Lande said during a recent interview in her Muscatine home, where in 2012, Xi — by then vice president of China — returned to visit his “old friends” from Iowa. “Old friend” is a common phrase China’s communist party uses as a tribute to foreigners considered helpful to their interests. It’s also an…Read more