The Foreign Service Journal, September 2012

36 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 2 nearly 130 years before Pres. Obama’s trip. Yung Wing’s Chi- nese Educational Mission to the United States was ambitious but short-lived, lasting from 1872 to 1881. After a Western expedition put down the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, China was required to pay massive war reparations to seven European powers and the United States. In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt approved the use of some of those funds for three purposes: to cre- ate a scholarship program for Chinese students to study in the United States; to set up an American preparatory school in Beijing (which later expanded to become the pre- mier Tsinghua University); and to establish a foundation to fund the China Institute in New York City in 1925. The Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program, as it was known, enabled about 1,300 Chinese students to attend uni- versities and colleges in theUnited States between 1909 and 1939. Participants included an extraordinary number of leg- endary figures who later contributed greatly to Sino-Amer- ican relations and helped modernize China. In fact, the impact of this program continues to reverberate to this day. In 1946, Senator WilliamFulbright, D-Ark., introduced legislation to establish the Fulbright International Ex- change Program. China, then known as the Republic of China, was the first country to sign on in 1947. Unfortu- nately it was suspended two years later, when the Com- munist Party took power in 1949. After a lapse of 30 years, the Fulbright program was resurrected following the es- tablishment of official relations between China and the United States in 1979, and has become China’s flagship ac- ademic exchange program with the United States. Even so, participation in the exchanges has been de- cidedly one-sided. According to the Institute of Interna- tional Education and the State Department’s Educational and Cultural Affairs Office’s last “Open Doors” report, is- sued last November, some 158,000 Chinese students were enrolled at American colleges and universities. Repre- senting 22 percent of the total international student pop- ulation in the United States, it is the largest single contingent of foreign students here. In contrast, fewer than 14,000 American students stud- ied in China in 2010. Though striking, this numerical im- balance is not a concern in and of itself. After all, foreign students contributed more than $21.2 billion to the U.S. economy last year. The real con- cern is that so few American stu- dents study Chinese language and culture or aspire to learn more about China. It is also worth noting that Chi- nese participants typically come from families with means, and tend to enroll in science and tech- nology programs at major schools. In contrast, American students mostly take short-term courses, either for a sum- mer or a single school year. Fortunately, thanks to in- creased funding from both governmental and corporate sources, the mix of American students going to China has slowly begun to change. Ambassadors for the United States in China Speaking at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in May 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of- fered the following description of the 100,000-Strong Ini- tiative’s purpose. In her view, it enables American students “to learn Mandarin Chinese, to experience Chinese cul- ture, and to learn about the hospitality of the Chinese peo- ple, while they also serve as ambassadors for the United States in China.” The need for Americans to learn a foreign language and culture is also strongly endorsed in a November 2011 re- port from the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR task force report found that American students are ill pre- pared to compete with their global peers due to their lack of language skills, cultural knowledge and global aware- ness. This jeopardizes their ability to interact with others in many fields. To lead the effort, State set up a small office in the Bu- reau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs known as the 100,000-Strong Office, and named Carola McGiffert, a smart-power leader at the Center for Strategic and Inter- national Studies, as its director. Drawing on more than two decades of experience, she moved the initiative rapidly and seamlessly forward, even without funds appropriated for it by Congress, by enlisting private-sector support. Thanks to her advocacy, American corporations with busi- ness ties to China and other private-sector entities have al- ready pledged more than $15 million. After the office was set up, an advisory committee co- chaired by former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and for- mer Senator Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., selected four U.S. F OCUS China’s first effort to organize cultural and educational exchanges with America lasted from 1872 to 1881.