Forty students from China and across the United States arrived on campus Sunday for a student conference on U.S.-China relations. The hope of the weeklong event is simple: Networking and cultural awareness between the future leaders of two great powers will foster amicable relationships between China and the United States decades down the road.

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Gus Jewell

American Ambassador Harvey Feldman, the keynote speaker at the FACES conference, speaks with American and Chinese students on campus for a weeklong conference.

“On Common Ground 2007” is the product of the Forum for American-Chinese Exchange at Stanford (FACES), which was founded in 2001 in response to the international incident following the downing of an American spy plane on Chinese territory, according to FACES president Kabir Chadha ‘07.

Jessica Chen Weiss ‘03 was studying in Beijing at the time and started the group as a response to the heightened tension, misunderstanding and suspicion caused by the incident.

“The impetus,” Chadha said, “was to bring together future leaders on a grassroots level so that if such a thing was to happen down the line we could sidestep any unnecessary misunderstandings.”

“As an organization,” he said, “its mission is to bring the future leaders of the United States and China together today, so that 10, 15, 20 years down the line, when they all go places and mature as leaders, based on this forum they can better U.S.-China relations because they all know each other and because of the tight network we’ve created.”

Drew Camarda ‘08, director of recruiting and publicity for FACES, said program applicants were vetted through a rigorous selection process that whittled the delegate pool down from 850 applicants to 40.

“This was our most successful year in terms of applications,” Camarda said. “There was an application increase of 250 over last year.

Wynn Tanner ‘07, director of American recruiting for FACES, said undergraduate and graduate students across a wide range of academic fields, as well as students from Taiwan and Hong Kong, are represented among this year’s delegates. Four are Stanford students.

This week’s conference at Stanford is the first of a two-part series. The second installment will take place in November at Beijing’s Renmin University, one of three FACES chapter universities in China.

“We’re excited to have the conference there,” said Director of Chinese Recruiting Randy Yang. “This is the first time that that chapter has hosted the event.”

After a week’s worth of activities — including formal debates, lectures and panels as well as social mixers and an Iron Chef competition — delegates will go to San Francisco and attend a closing banquet back on campus tomorrow before they check out Saturday morning.

“The week has been thrilling for us because it’s a culmination of all our work,” Chadha said. “The amazing people we’ve been reading about are actually here in the flesh. They have great opinions to share and it’s fun to sit in any event we have to see them engage each other. We’re really making an impact.”