On a summer afternoon at the University of International Business and Economics, high school students from Iowa and Shijiazhuang City traded shots across a pickleball net—and in doing so, became part of something larger than a friendly match.
The event brought together American students from Iowa and Chinese students from the northern city of Shijiazhuang for friendly pickleball matches in Beijing, part of China’s sweeping initiative to invite 50,000 young Americans to participate in exchange and study programmes. The initiative was first announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping during his November 2023 visit to the United States, and the numbers have since moved faster than anyone anticipated—Chinese authorities confirmed that more than 50,000 young Americans had already traveled to China by the end of May, reaching the target two and a half years ahead of schedule.
For the Iowa students stepping onto the court in Beijing, the day carried the kind of novelty that only comes with a first encounter with a genuinely different world.
“It’s going to be a fun experience, coming to China is super cool, experiencing the flights and other people and the new culture,” said Brady Scott Westergaard. Reagan Eileen Flemmer was equally enthusiastic. “Very excited to see different sites. I know it’s like a very pretty country here. So I’m excited to see all of it.” Carrigan Grace Rasmussen put it simply: “I hope to learn a lot more. I love to tour about different culture and different type of geography.”
The teachers who accompanied them understood what the visit represented beyond tourism and sport.
“I think the initiative is wonderful and we were very lucky to have it,” said Laura Michelle Kelly. Ryli Sue Davis, a language teacher, framed it in terms of the values she brings to her classroom every day. “I think it’s so valuable to learn about different cultures, to open your minds to different ways of life, and to learn different languages. It’s one of my greatest values to appreciate different cultures and to learn different languages.”
The pickleball connection between the two countries has its own brief but meaningful history. This July marks one year since President Xi replied to a letter from a US youth pickleball cultural exchange delegation from Maryland, congratulating teachers and students from 13 American schools on their successful visit to China in April of the previous year. In his reply, Xi wrote that he was pleased to see pickleball becoming a new bond for youth exchanges between China and the United States—and that the future of bilateral relations depends on the young.
It is a notable sentiment, particularly given the complexity of the relationship between the two countries at the diplomatic level. That pickleball—a sport born in an American backyard and now played by hundreds of millions across Asia—has emerged as a vehicle for that connection says something about how sport operates in spaces where politics struggles to reach.
The Iowa students will also visit the Great Wall and travel to Shanghai during their one-week stay. But the afternoon on the pickleball court in Beijing may be the memory that stays longest—the one where competition and friendship arrived at the same time, from opposite sides of the net.
