Bridging Minds Across the Pacific: U.S.-China Educational Exchanges, 1978-2003

About the Book

Bridging Minds Across the Pacific offers new insight into U.S.-China relations by looking at the far-reaching dynamics of educational exchanges between these two countries. Deng Xiaoping's milestone decision in 1978 to send a large number of Chinese nationals to study in the United States has fostered increased cross-Pacific dialogue among academics. In recent years a tidal wave of "returnees" who studied abroad have moved back to China. Cheng Li and this volume's distinguished contributors examine how these individuals are working to shape their home country, especially in social science curriculum development, program-building, and research, and in public policy formation. This book explores whether sweeping educational exchanges between these two profoundly different countries have promoted productive mutual understanding.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1 Foreword
Chapter 2 Introduction: Open Doors and Open Minds
Chapter 3 Sino-American Educational Interaction from the Microcosm of Fudan's Early Years
Chapter 4 Mission Accomplished: The Influence of the CSCPRC on Educational Relations with China
Chapter 5 Coming Home to Teach: The Status and Mobility of Returnees in China's Higher Education
Chapter 6 Transnational Capital: Valuing Academic Returnees in a Globalizing China
Chapter 7 Sino-American Educational Exchange and International Relations Studies in China
Chapter 8 Sino-American Educational Exchanges and Public Administrative Reforms in China: A Study of Norm Diffusion
Chapter 9 Balancing the Cross-Pacific Exchange: American Study-Abroad Programs in the PRC
Chapter 10 China's Hong Kong Bridge
Chapter 11 Sino-American Educational Exchanges and the Drive to Create World-Class Universities

About the Author :
Cheng Li is William R. Kenan Professor of Government and Chair of Asian Studies at Hamilton College.

Review :
Dr. Cheng Li, a leading scholar on China and the United States, has edited this penetrating and comprehensive book on U.S.-China educational exchanges with its enormous impact on China as well as its limits and problems. It is a must-read for anyone interested in this most important relationship. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter expressed the hope that educational exchanges between the United States and China, which were just beginning, would become 'a routine part of the everyday life of both the American and Chinese people.' Carter’s wish, shared by China’s Deng Xiaoping, has been realized. This outstanding collection of essays is the story of twenty-five years of educational exchanges that have contributed to the development of U.S.-China relations, but more importantly have been a major factor in the profound normative changes in China since Deng’s 'Reform and Opening' began. We owe a debt of gratitude to Cheng Li and his colleagues for focusing attention on an often neglected but increasingly important dimension of U.S.-China relations, and for doing so in a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and historically rooted manner that recognizes both the problems and the promise of transnational educational exchange. Brilliant students from China have taken doctorates in the United States, while relatively few Americans have studied language in China. How has educational exchange affected both countries? What recent cracks have appeared in the educational bridge? This book is the first to provide detailed statistical and narrative accounts to answer such questions—and to link the answers to constructivist theory in international relations. Anyone interested in China or Sino-American relations should read this wonderful book. In the twenty-five years since China opened up, 700,000 Chinese have traveled abroad to study; 172,000 have already returned. This book is the best account yet of this intellectual interchange that has brought not a clash but a dialogue between civilizations. The result: a renaissance of intellectual life that has led China to stop promoting revolutions and instead promote trade, investment, and international conferences.