Chinese Students in the US: an Unaccomplished Mission

Today, we will explore the commencement of the first group of Chinese students who embarked on their studies in the United States about 150 years ago. Remarkably, many among them emerged as pivotal figures in the pursuit of national liberation and the nation’s journey toward modernity.

On November 15, Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed China’s readiness to extend invitations to 50,000 young Americans for exchange and study programs over the next five years. The goal is to foster increased interaction between the two nations, with a particular focus on enhancing connections among the youth. President Xi made this announcement during a welcome dinner held in San Francisco, a city that holds historical significance as the initial destination of his inaugural visit to the United States decades ago.

According to statistics from the Institute of International Education, some 290,000 Chinese students were studying in the US last year, an 8.6 percent decline from the previous year.

About 150 years ago, the US was the first country in the world to receive the first government-funded students from China. Their average age was 12. They were sent by the imperial Qing government under an initiative promoted by the first Chinese graduate from the United States, Rong Hong, who was known as Yung Wing in the US. 

Some of these children became Chinese diplomats, engineers and military officers. One of them, Liang Cheng, became the Qing court’s ambassador to the United States. And Great Britain knighted him as Sir Chentung Liang Cheng. He initiated and facilitated a project in which some of the reparations paid by the Qing to Western powers for losses over the Boxer Rebellion were used to fund the study of Chinese students in the US and other Western countries.

Yung Wing was born to a poor family in Guangdong Province. When he was 7 years old, he went to a mission school in Macao which was set up by Mrs. Gutzlaff, the wife of an English missionary, under the auspices of the Ladies’ Association in London. Yung did not like school life at first and even tried to run away. But he apparently changed. He then became one of the first students at another missionary school called the Morrison School set up by the Morrison Education Society in Macao and Hong Kong. 

Samuel Robbins Brown, a missionary from Connecticut and a graduate of Yale, was head of the school in Hong Kong. When he decided to return to the US, he offered to bring three boys with him so they could continue their education. Students willing to go were asked to stand, and Yung was the first one on his feet. In 1847, the 19-year-old Yung enrolled in Monson Academy in Massachusetts, a preparatory school which is today’s Wilbraham and Monson Academy. According to the school’s website, it was the first school in the US to admit a Chinese student. In 1850, Yung went to Yale and graduated with a bachelor’s degree four years later. At Yale, he was “the only yellow in a white world,” said Harold Koh, former Dean of the Yale Law School, in his lecture in 2004 to mark the 150th anniversary of Yung’s graduation from Yale. 

After he returned to China, Yung served as a translator and aide to Zeng Guofan, one of the key officials in the Westernization Movement during the last years of the Qing. The purpose of the movement was to adopt Western technology to strengthen the Qing empire. Yung contributed a lot to the construction of China’s first factory with modern industrial technology and equipment. He also proposed sending some students to the US. Zeng and another senior official called Li Hongzhang who was also keen on the Westernization Movement supported him. 

In his English memoir My Life in China and America, which was published in 1909, Yung wrote, “I was determined that the rising generation of China should enjoy the same educational advantages that I had enjoyed; that through Western education, China might be regenerated, become enlightened and powerful. To accomplish that objective became the guiding star of my ambition.” 

Yung believed that it would be better to study abroad from childhood. But parents did not want their young children to leave home and go to a completely strange place across the ocean. It took lot of persuasion from Yung and his colleagues as well as their families to get others to finally agree. Altogether, 120 children went to the US for study between 1872 and 1875, divided into four groups of 30. The project was known as the Chinese Educational Mission. 

It was a long and even dangerous journey. The transcontinental train that the 30 children in the second group took from the west to the east was robbed. Fortunately, their host families in New England received them warmly. First, they studied in primary and secondary schools in the US. Later, some were admitted to college, including Yale, MIT, Columbia, and Harvard. 

The young children were quick to learn not only their lessons, but also Western lifestyles and ideas. Every Chinese male under the Qing’s rule had to wear a long queue, a long plait of hair, and their marriage was to be arranged by their parents. But some of the students cut off their queues, fell in love without parental consent, and some even became Christians. Racial discrimination against Chinese was also rising in the US since the late 1870s. 

“There is no room for Chinese students.” This was the answer that Yung received to his application for Chinese students to be admitted to West Point and the Naval Academy in Annapolis. The imperial Qing government was furious and recalled the Chinese students in 1881. The following year the US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first law to restrict immigration to the US of an entire ethnic group. The children stayed in the US for five to nine years, much shorter than the scheduled 15 years. And some were too young to go to college when they were recalled. 

Among the 120 children, 94 returned to China. The others either died from illness or stayed in the US. The project was criticized as a failure by Qing officials. However, the children contributed a lot to China’s development in various fields after they grew up. For example, Zhan Tianyou, “the father of China’s railway,” designed the first railway that China built by itself. 

Tang Shaoyi was the first premier of the Republic of China. Cai Shaoji was president of Peiyang University founded in 1895 which is today’s Tianjin University. Tang Guo’an was one of the first leaders of the Tsinghua School and Tsinghua College, which today form Tsinghua University. Others also made big achievements in the businesses of mining and the telegraph, as well as in education and diplomacy. 

Fourteen of the children, the largest part of the cohort, became senior officers of the Qing navy. The most famous example was Chen Jinkui. During the war between China and Japan in 1894, under the order of the British-educated Captain Deng Shichang, Chen steered his ship, which was badly damaged by gunfire, in a collision course with a Japanese ship, but his ship sunk before reaching its target. All the officers and soldiers on board died. 

Most of the senior navy officers of the Qing studied abroad in the US or the UK. They were killed either in the war with Japan in 1894 or by the Qing emperor after the war. The war not only destroyed the Qing navy, but also the fruits of the Westernization Movement. 

About 30 years after the Chinese children were ordered back to the US, the Qing began to send students to the US again. These students made great contributions to the development of China’s education and science and technology. The reason lies in the way their studies were funded in the US. 

In the late 19th century, a peasant uprising known as the Boxer Rebellion swept the north of China. Its original purpose was to overthrow the Qing and drive all foreigners out of China. But the Qing believed it was an opportunity to remove Western forces from China. The Qing encouraged the Boxer militias to attack foreigners and Christian churches. In June 1900, the Qing army and the Boxers besieged the Legation Quarter where foreign embassies in Beijing were located. In August that year, an international coalition army from European powers, the US, and Japan captured Beijing. 

In the Boxer Protocol signed the next year, the Qing was required to pay these countries 450 million taels of silver over a period of 39 years. The powers believed the Chinese population was 450 million. So, the 450 million taels meant every Chinese should pay one tael each. As there was also 4 percent annual interest, the total amount was more than double the original 450 million taels. It was much higher than the losses inflicted on Western countries during the Boxer Rebellion and a heavy burden for Chinese people.

US President Theodore Roosevelt began to consider refunding the extra reparations that exceeded the true losses of the US. The amount in question was much more than the amount that the Qing had already paid, as the payment was due in 39 years. The only way of refunding it was to reduce or even write off the debts. However, other Western powers would have been frustrated if the US had done this. There was also strong opposition from within the US. In addition, the imperial Qing government, which should have been held responsible for the conflict, had appropriated more money from the Chinese people to pay for the reparations. The Qing rulers would never give the money back to its people even if the US refunded the money. The idea of refunding sounds morally good, but it was not technically feasible. 

In 1903, Sir Chentung Liang Cheng, one of the 120 children in the Chinese Educational Mission, became Chinese ambassador to the US. He came up with the idea of using the money that would be refunded to pay for Chinese students to study in the US. The Qing would continue paying the reparations to the US, but it would be spent on Chinese students. A special committee would be set up for this purpose. In this way, the money from the Chinese people would contribute to China’s education. Liang used his connections in the US education and diplomatic fields to promote his proposal. He also lobbied President Roosevelt in their meetings. 

Liang Cheng was only 17 years old, and still too young to go to college, when all the children were recalled. But he was a famous baseball player in his secondary school, the Phillips Academy Andover. This experience helped him build good personal relations with President Roosevelt, according to Liang’s profile at Andover. The president supported Liang’s proposal. Each year 100 students were selected through an exam to study in the US. In addition, Tsinghua School was set up as a preparatory school for students to be sent to the US. It went on to become Tsinghua University, which today is one of China’s most prestigious universities.   

A few years later, other powers that had signed the Boxer Protocol, with the exception of Japan, followed suit. A punishment imposed on the Chinese people was turned into pressure on the Qing rulers to improve education. The program lasted till 1940, and its graduates made great contributions to the modernization of China’s science and technology sector as well as its educational system. Some graduates became famous educators and scholars, including Hu Shi, a former president of Peking University, Mei Yiqi, former president of Tsinghua University, and Zhao Yuanren, a famous educator at top universities in both China and the US.

Some of the money was used for a special project to fund Tsinghua students to study in the US. It required that 80 percent of these students major in the sciences. The purpose was to improve China’s research on basic theories. Graduates financed by the project included Qian Xuesen, father of China’s aerospace exploration and Yang Zhenning, the first ethnic Chinese to be awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1957.  

For their home countries, students who study abroad have the opportunity to bring back not only cutting-edge science and technology, but more importantly, a broader world vision – a vision in which isolationism and xenophobia are not even a possibility. Frequent exchanges and honest communication should always prevail.

Well, that’s the end of our podcast. Our theme music is by the famous film score composer Roc Chen. We want to thank our writer Song Yimin, translator Li Jia, and copy editor Kathleen Naday. And thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please tell a friend so they, too, can understand The Context.