China

The China Focus project publishes China Pulse, a biannual digital survey of Chinese public opinion on international issues, foreign policy, and domestic issues, including Chinese attitudes toward the U.S., European powers, and China’s Asian neighbors. 

We maintain a widely read platform for global peace advocates: the U.S.-China Perception Monitor and its Chinese edition, 中美印象. We publish original analyses, opinions, and interviews with top experts on each country’s international role. Our English-language content is published as a free newsletter twice a week. Our Chinese-language content complements our original content with translations of important articles shaping the global conversation on China.

The bilingual websites were launched in 2015.

Central to our influential publications on bilateral relations is the annual Jimmy Carter Forum on U.S.-China Relations. The forum assembles former government officials, policy experts, and academics from the U.S., China, and around the world for robust discussion of the diplomatic challenges between the two countries. Published proceedings and papers from the conference provide action-oriented insights that advance collaboration on key issues.

In 2012, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter opened the inaugural Forum on U.S.-China Relations in Beijing.

Every year, we invite early-career policy professionals, researchers, and academics from China and the U.S. to attend the Emerging Voices for U.S.-China Cooperation conference. Participants meet their international counterparts and gain understanding of the mutual benefits that arise from peace and cooperation across the Pacific.

In a groundbreaking agreement, the Ministry of Civil Affairs of China granted The Carter Center permission in 1997 to observe village election procedures. The Carter Center participated in and led voter education initiatives, trained election officials, gathered data, and observed village election procedures. As a champion of participatory democracy worldwide, we also hosted a Chinese delegation that observed U.S. elections.

In addition to promoting democratic processes, The Carter Center and its Chinese partners helped improve local government performance in China for more than 15 years. The Center built channels for civic participation in rural villages and improved relations between homeowners and local government in urban centers.

Over decades, The Carter Center launched projects that share information on democracy, self-government, elections, and global perceptions of China with Chinese citizens. These online publications became the most highly visited websites about political reform both inside and outside China.

By curating key sites across the country’s main blogging platform, Weibo, we gave policymakers and scholars access to internal opinion on China. This expanded and added to information found in official media reports.

As China began to allow its citizens greater access to government information, we created websites to bolster access to information and foster exchanges among officials and scholars in China.

The Center also worked with two local governments in implementing the Open Government Information Regulation, which was passed at the national level in 2008. We worked to create exchanges among access to information officials and scholars in China and other nations.

From 1987 to 1992, in collaboration with the China Disabled Persons Federation, The Carter Center helped to improve educational opportunities for children with disabilities and address the nation’s need for modern artificial limbs. 

A second Carter Center initiative in the 1990s helped China develop the capacity to manufacture and deliver modern prosthetic devices for the millions of people who needed them. In 1991, The Carter Center successfully transitioned the prosthetics project to the Chinese government, which has sustained and expanded it.