It must be something impossible for the first group of Chinese students sent to the United States nearly 140 years ago to imagine: a new generation of Chinese youth raise friendly but tough questions to a visiting US president face to face and through the internet in the 21st century.

In 1872, 30 Chinese adolescents were dispatched from Shanghai, across the Pacific, to the United States for learning advanced Western knowledge and technology by the waning feudal Qing Dynasty, which was bogging down in storming domestic turbulence and flagrant foreign invasion.

Some of the youngsters did acquire the latest Western technology and make contributions to China, such as building a well-known railway outside Peking. But the last-minute efforts by the Dynasty and its elite youths failed to turn over the tide of its eclipse and final collapse.

Some 137 years later, the generation of Chinese youth growing up in the prosperity of China's reform and opening-up and with the kaleidoscope of the information age had a dialogue face to face and through the internet with US President Barack Obama, who is visiting Shanghai Monday, a glittering city boasting its modern skyscrapers and the dozens of Western-style historical buildings on the Bund.

The energetic youth, passionate in surfing both the real world and the internet, are eager to explore and embrace the waves of the world. Their efforts, without doubt, will bestow them with fresh and advanced knowledge and technology, which are heaps conducive to the development of China.

During his speech at the dialogue with Chinese youth, Obama said the United States has a positive, constructive and comprehensive relationship with China that opens the door to partnership on the key global issues of our time such as economic recovery, development of clean energy, nuclear non-proliferation, and so on.

During the question-and-answer session of the dialogue, Chinese youngsters, either face to face or through the internet, put forward a variety of questions concerning China-US ties, clean energy, cultural exchanges, the Taiwan issue, Afghanistan, etc.

Among them, one question was "what are you going to bring to China and bring back to the United States," while another was "what will the US government do for the diversity of different cultures."

Actually, just in one and a half days by Saturday noon, netizens submitted some 3,300 questions for Obama on the website of www.xinhua.org, the exclusive website to live broadcast the dialogue.

It is unknown that whether Obama, who is famous for his "Change" slogan during his presidential campaigns, is astonished to witness the tremendous changes of China and Chinese youth over the past 31 years since the reform and opening up in 1978.

Obama's communication ways with Chinese youth are quite different with those of his predecessors during their visits to China.

In 1972, during President Richard Nixon's trip to China, he also traveled to Shanghai, where he visited an industrial exhibition and held a press conference, but didn't have a dialogue with Chinese youth.

When President Bill Clinton, who advocated the building of the "information highway," visited China and was challenged by Beijing University students with tough questions in 1998, only a very limited number of Chinese knew what the Internet was and most Chinese youths had no access to it at all. However, there had been338 million netizens in China by the end of this June, many of whom are youngsters.

The 21st-century Chinese youth nowadays are opening up their arms widely and embracing the world fervidly and confidently.

Soon, they will ride on the waves of a more modernized China and the colorful world, make their efforts and create a better future for China, and, together with youth in other countries, also for the world.

(Xinhua News Agency November 16, 2009)