The Bell for Peace was ringing in downtown Beijing yesterday as old and new council members of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) gathered to draw up the blueprints for their work over the next five years.

The association, the country's largest for people-to-people friendship and understanding, has an important role to play in China's overall diplomacy with and opening up to the outside world, Tang Jiaxuan, State councillor in charge of China's foreign affairs, said yesterday.

Tang recalled the time, while on the staff of the CPAFFC, he accompanied the national team to the world table tennis championship in Japan in April 1971. He witnessed the exciting moment when Chinese and American players set in motion the breaking of the ice that then surrounding Sino-US relations.

In the same year, he joined a Shanghai ballet troupe during its tour of Japan, which became a prelude to the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan in September 1972.

The association, founded in 1954, formed its ninth Council yesterday to help map out its work for the next five years.

With its members drawn from political, administrative, cultural, media and other sectors of society, the association has expanded its reach to help forge and maintain contacts between Chinese people and their foreign associates not only in political, social and cultural spheres, but also in trade, commerce and urban management, Chen Haosu, its president, said.

As a result of the association's vigorous promotion, it now maintains regular contact with 458 people-to-people and international organizations. It has also helped tie the friendship knot between Chinese cities and their twins around the world.

In recent years, the CPAFFC has arranged visits to China for World War II veterans from the United States, Russia, South Korea and Japan. A team of American POWs who survived the hard days in Shenyang, capital of Northeast China's Liaoning Province, during the Japanese occupation in the early 1940s, will arrive in Beijing next week.

The association will continue to enhance friendships between peoples and promote international cooperation so as to contribute to world peace and common development for a harmonious world, Chen said.

Source: China Daily