Boxer Indemnity Scholarship

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The Boxer Indemnity Scholarship (Chinese: ??????? ; pinyin: G? Ngz? P © © © © ng? N ), funded by Boxer Rebellion indemnity money, is a scholarship program for Chinese students to be educated in the United States. In 1908, the US Congress passed a law to return to China the advantages of Boxer Indemnity, which amounted to more than 17 million dollars. Despite the fierce controversy over the return of excess payments, President Theodore Roosevelt's government decided to establish an Indemnity Boxer Scholarship Program to educate the young Chinese generation. President Roosevelt recognizes the program as an opportunity for "US-led Reforms in China" that can maximize US profits by enhancing US-China relations, bridging China with American culture, and promoting the international image of the United States. Instead of imitating European imperialism and using military means to gain short-term financial advantage, Roosevelt set up a program to ensure peace and commerce in China in "the most satisfying and refined way", while helping the United States to gain respect and take a leadership position in the world.

From the very beginning, the Indemnity Boxer Scholarship Program has been called "the most important scheme to educate Chinese students in America and arguably the most consequential and successful in the whole twentieth-century Chinese study movement."

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Chinese Education Mission

Prior to the establishment of the Indemnity Boxer Scholarship Program, the Yung Wing Chinese Education Mission also provided several higher education opportunities in the US for Chinese students. As the first Chinese graduate of Yale University, Yung Wing persuaded the Qing government to send a group of young Chinese students to the United States to study Western science and technology in 1871. Beginning in 1872, with support from some reformist-minded officials of the Qing Dynasty, Yung founded the Chinese Education Mission to send 120 Chinese students to study in the New England region of the United States. However, this short-term effort was dissolved in 1881, a year before the Chinese Exclusion Act, and there was little later activity.

Boxer Protocol

In 1899, a group of Chinese citizens known as Boxers, rebelled against the Qing Empire in an attempt to expel all foreign influence in China. The revolt, later to become known as the Boxer Rebellion, began as an anti-foreign, anti-colonial, peasant-based movement in northern China, in response to strange Westerners who seized land from locals, seized concessions, and granted immunity to criminals who converted to Catholicism. The rebels attacked foreigners, who built the railroads and violated Feng shui, and the Christians, who were responsible for Chinese foreign domination. In the summer of 1900, a coalition called the Eight Nations Alliance composed of Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Britain and the United States sent troops to quell the insurgency and forced the Qing government to sign the Boxer Protocol, which required the government Qing paid 450 million fine tael silver for compensation for 39 years to the eight countries involved. Below the exchange rate at the time, this equals US $ 335 million dollars of gold or Ã, Â £ 67 million. Including flowers, Qing finally paid 982,238,150 taels (~ 1.180 million troy ounces (37,000 t) of silver, where US stocks were 7.32%.

China-U.S. relationship and return of Boxer Indemnity advantages

In 1904, as nationalism grew in China, the persecution of Chinese immigrants in America and the renewal of the Chinese Exclusion Act by the federal government sparked outrage across China. The following year, accumulated tensions erupted as angry Chinese launched a national boycott of American goods. The boycott movement produced terrible consequences for American trade in China:

Within ten months, cotton goods worth $ 21,125,838 just went from this country to the Chinese empire. Not only is this export trade threatened by a Chinese boycott, but our efforts for a much larger future development are practically given to European countries. There are some interests in the United States that will not feel a bit of a Chinese boycott in one way or another.

Government and US traders know that they can not unleash such a huge potential market. However, President Roosevelt did not want to end a boycott in China through military means, because Japan, Britain, and many other European powers have flexed their military muscles throughout China and occupied substantial resources. If the United States jumps and "shares" China, not only will the US gain little financial return, it will also offend other major powers.

At the same time, Liang Cheng, Qing's representative to the US, learned that the Boxer Protocol requirements gave the US more than initially requested and started a campaign to pressure the US to restore its distinction to China. In addition, American missionaries in China, who sympathize with the average Chinese family suffering, are shouting to restore the advantages of Boxer Indemnity. Roosevelt took this opportunity and expressed his intention to "do Chinese justice about this compensation" in an Atlanta speech when he declared: "we [America] can not expect China to do justice for us unless we do Chinese justice." Roosevelt realizes that if the United States helps China and returns the excess Boxer Indemnity while all other forces take over its territory and exploit its people, "with very little effort, the good will of China can be won in a big and satisfying way". However, William Rockhill, the US minister to China, strongly opposed the idea of ​​returning the money to the corrupt Qing government, because he believed the money would not escape their greed. Other solutions should be set.

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Establishment of a scholarship program

Among the many proposals for the use of remittances, Roosevelt tends toward "cultural investment" through education, envisioning education as a great bridge in the Pacific, where the United States can extend its influence to the Far East. As the Japanese and European powers carved the sphere of influence in China, the conservative Qing government finally sought to study Western technology and adopted Western policy to reform China and fulfill Western powers as equal. During that time, many students returning from the West such as Liang Cheng and Tang Shaoyi "had previously been pushed into the margins of government and shunned because of their Western influence, brought to power as the fate of reformists increased".

In 1906, Illinois University President Edmund J. James, who headed the University from 1904-1920, proposed to President Theodore Roosevelt plans to establish a scholarship program to send Chinese students to the US. The letter of James 1906 was recorded to President Roosevelt,

China is on the brink of revolution... The nation that has succeeded in educating the younger generations of Chinese generations will now become a nation that for the expenditure of the given business will get the greatest results in moral, intellectual and commercial influences.

However, the tendency in China at the time was to "adopt Japanese policy, and thus involve Japan as its instructor". As the military and political influence of Japan grew rapidly, Roosevelt's government could not allow the inclusion of many Chinese students to Japan continue to rise and watched their Pacific rivals take over China through intellectual domination. Therefore, he quickly "approved in April 1906 for the wisdom of Smith's proposal" and decided to establish the Indemnity Boxer Scholarship Program to "transform the flow of Chinese students" into America. The following year Roosevelt delivered this message to the Senate and the House of Representatives at its annual address:

Mr. Roosevelt announced the intention of the United States Government to free China of all payments in relation to Boxer's warfare in excess of the amount required for actual compensation to the United States... The United States, he added, 'should help in every practical way in the education of the people Chinese, so that the vast and dense Chinese Empire can gradually adapt to modern conditions. One way to do this is to promote the arrival of Chinese students to this country and make it attractive for them to take courses at our Universities and higher education institutions. Our educators should, as far as possible, take joint action to achieve this goal. '

Although President Roosevelt claims that his intention is to help China "adjust to modern conditions", it actually aims to direct reforms in China by creating an influential group of influential Chinese-educated leaders. With a friendly Chinese reform environment, returning students from America will occupy important positions in politics because of their knowledge of the American bureaucracy. Their education in high school and American colleges, which will take place in their formative period of life, will have "a profound impact on their political, emotional and even physical development". They will have special sentiments towards America and will thank the US government for their educational opportunities. Next, they will look for new Chinese models after the US rather than Japan, and prefer American goods. Like Liang Cheng, the Chinese minister to the United States said the group of students would be able to "guarantee peace and trade in the Far East whose treaties and military powers can not guarantee". The miracle of educational exchanges can extend far beyond the field of education. As Smith hoped, the most "satisfying and subtle" way to "obtain the greatest result in moral, intellectual, and commercial influence", because "trade follows moral and spiritual dominance is much more certain than following the flag." The establishment of the Indemnity Boxer Scholarship Program is not just "a friendly act" as Roosevelt claims, it is also a cultural investment to bridge China with the US and a far-sighted scheme to peacefully control China's reform and development.

Despite further proposals by China to use funds in China, the settlement was made on American terms.

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Development

The program, established in 1909, funded selection, preparation training, transportation to the US, and study for scholarship recipients. Part of the first pardon of money included the establishment in 1911 of the preparatory school in Peking (Beijing) for Chinese graduates pursuing further study at the university - American universities. Preparatory School, founded on 29 April 1911 at the site of the former royal garden, named Tsinghua College ( ???? \\/span>; Q? nghuÃÆ'¡ XuÃÆ' Â © tÃÆ'¡ng ). Faculty members for the sciences are recruited by the YMCA from the United States and their graduates are transferred directly to American schools as juniors after graduation. The school was later expanded to offer undergraduate and graduate programs four years and become the famous Tsinghua University.

The second pardon in 1924 was prepared for the establishment of the China Foundation (?????? ii Zh Zh Zh Zh Zh Zh Zh Zh Zh Zh Zh Zh ????????????? Which which which which which which which which) which in turn will fund the Chinese Institute in New York City in 1926.

From 1909 to 1929, the Indemnity Boxer Scholarship Program sent about 1,300 Chinese students to study in US Drawing candidates from all over China, the process of examination for this prestigious scholarship was very competitive: among the 630 candidates in 1937, only 47 were selected. In view of China's Strengthening Movement during that time, the Qing government urged students to focus their studies in the fields of Science, Engineering, Agriculture, Medicine, and Commerce. Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of the most popular destinations. In 1929, after Tsinghua became a true university, the Indemnity Boxer Scholarship Program was opened for all candidates.

A total of five clerical groups were educated in the US before the Japanese invasion of China in 1937.

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Legacy

Chinese Chinese and Chinese are beneficiaries of the Indemnity Boxer Scholarship Program, including philosopher Hu Shih, Nobel laureate Physicist Chen Ning Yang, electrical engineer Yuk-Wing Lee, mathematician Kai Lai Chung, linguist Yuen Ren Chao, Kuo Ping- Wen educator , rocket scientist Tsien Hsue-shen, meteorologist and scholar Coching Chu (???), and architectural engineer Edward Y. Ying, who was influential in modern Shanghai planning. The scholarship serves as a model for the Fulbright Program grant for international education exchange.

Remittances for overpayment and the establishment of a scholarship program also helped to enhance the international reputation of the United States. In a letter to Foreign Minister John Hay, Liang Cheng, Chinese minister to the United States wrote, "If your honorable state will lead (in return for excessive repayment payments), wherever the voice of virtue spreads, the nations will rise and follow ". As the emerging superpower leader, Roosevelt acknowledged Boxer Indemnity's pardon as an opportunity for the US to take a leadership position in the world. Roosevelt later claimed after the pardon: "we have the right to expect that the return of these funds to China will stimulate the European Power to take action similar to the one just suggested, and that generosity on our part will be met by the same unconditional forgiveness by them. ". Roosevelt's actions then produce significant results. Action of justice, friendship, and US benefits greatly affects the other Power:

Other governments, which recognize the beneficial effects of America's initial actions on this issue, propose to take similar steps. The Japanese government has announced its decision to send Japan's share of compensation. The French government wants to use the compensation fund in the rehabilitation of French banks in China. The British government announced in December 1922 that they would spend "mutually beneficial" funds to Britain and to China... "

The Indemnity Boxer pardon, as planned by Roosevelt, helps the US to not only eliminate the shame caused by the boycott, but also build its international image.

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See also

• Indemnity Boxer Scholarship Recipient

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References

Source of the article : Wikipedia