The Jiangsu Association for Friendship and International Exchange(JAFIE) is a province-level and foreign-related social organization founded under the supervision of the Standing Committee of Jiangsu Provincial People’s Congress. The major goal of JAFIE includes: to integrate resources for foreign affairs within Jiangsu Province, to widely engage various forms government-civilian conversations with a focus on both communication and research, to enrich the public diplomacy of Jiangsu, to open up a new non-governmental approach to foreign affairs, to foster mutual understandings and cooperations between Jiangsu and people around the globe, to improve international influence and image, to promote economic development and modernization of Jiangsu, and to make contributions to increase national soft power.

In recent years, with the increase of China’s Comprehensive National Power(CNP) and development in foreign affairs, public and people-to-people diplomacy are much more known to common people, with their significance being acknowledged in the meantime. JAFIE is actively exploring and creatively engaging in order to establish a brand new approach to international exchange.

Therefore, with the assistance of both domestic and foreign institutions, including Nanjing University, JAFIE established the Yangtze River International Forum. Through collaborations and communications with foreign Congressmen, think tanks, China-related social group, academic institutions and etc, JAFIE and the Yangtze River International Forum holds different events in the forms of case study, project cooperation, seminars, symposiums. Meanwhile, JAFIE works to bring domestic and foreign pundits, scholars, and elites together, to closely focus on the future development trajectory of domestic and international politics, to discuss, research, and analyze controversial and difficult issues from a national-strategy perspective, to have a conference on diplomacy-level domestic politics, to devote to fostering friendly cooperations between Jiangsu or even the whole country and other countries and areas worldwide, to provide consultations for government, and to serve for local economic and social development. We are determined to develop the Yangtze River International Forum into “a strategic high-end think tank as well as a platform for international communications.”