The Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program was a scholarship program for Chinese students to be educated in the United States, funded by the Boxer Indemnities. On May 25, 1908, the U.S. Congress Senate and House of Representatives passed the Joint Resolution (S. R. 23) to return to China the excess of Boxer Indemnity, amounting to over $11.9 million ($ million in ). Despite fierce controversies over returning the excess payment, President

Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), also known as Teddy or T.R., was the 26th president of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. Roosevelt previously was involved in New York (state), New York politics, incl ...

's administration decided to establish the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program to educate Chinese students in the United States. President Roosevelt recognized this program as a chance for "American-directed reform in China" that could improve United States–China relations and raise America's standing in the world. Instead of copying European imperialism and using military means to reap a short-term financial gain, Roosevelt established the program to ensure peace and trade in China in the "most satisfactory and subtle of all ways", while helping the United States gain respect and take a global leadership position. Since its inception, the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program has been called "the most important scheme for educating Chinese students in America and arguably the most consequential and successful in the entire foreign-study movement of twentieth century China." On July 16, 1925, President

Calvin Coolidge Calvin Coolidge (born John Calvin Coolidge Jr.; ; July 4, 1872January 5, 1933) was the 30th president of the United States, serving from 1923 to 1929. A Republican Party (United States), Republican lawyer from Massachusetts, he previously ...

approved "Executive Order 4268—Remission of Further Payments of Installments of the Chinese Indemnity" to implement the Congress's "Joint Resolution to provide for the remission of further payments of the annual installments of the Chinese indemnity" approved on May 21, 1924. Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Scholarship recipients 1909 2

Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Scholarship recipients 1909 2

Background

Chinese Educational Mission

Prior to the establishment of the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program, Yung Wing's Chinese Educational Mission also provided some higher education opportunities in the United States for Chinese students. As the first Chinese graduate of Yale University, Yung Wing persuaded the Qing government to send groups of young Chinese students to the United States to study Western science and technology in 1871. Beginning in 1872, with the support of some reform-minded officials of the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

, Yung established the Chinese Educational Mission to send 120 Chinese students to study in the New England region of the United States. However, this short-lived effort was disbanded in 1881, a year prior to the

Chinese Exclusion Act The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was a United States Code, United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. The law made exceptions for travelers an ...

, and there was little activity afterwards. BoxerAmericanTroops

Boxer Protocol

In 1899, a group of Chinese nationals known as Boxers, went on a campaign to expel all foreign influences in China. The uprising, known as the

Boxer Rebellion The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, was an anti-foreign, anti-imperialist, and anti-Christian uprising in North China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious F ...

, began as an anti-foreign,

anti-imperialist Anti-imperialism in political science and international relations is opposition to imperialism or neocolonialism. Anti-imperialist sentiment typically manifests as a political principle in independence struggles against intervention or influenc ...

, village-based movement in northern China, in response to fears of westerners seizing Chinese territory, requiring concession, seeking protection in court for their followers, and causing drought and natural disasters. Boxer groups attacked railroad builders, who were held to be violating

feng shui Feng shui ( or ), sometimes called Chinese geomancy, is a traditional form of geomancy that originated in ancient China and claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment. The term ''feng shui'' mean ...

, and Christians, who were held responsible for the foreign domination of China. In the summer of 1900, the

Eight-Nation Alliance The Eight-Nation Alliance was a multinational military coalition that invaded northern China in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion, with the stated aim of relieving the foreign legations in Beijing, which were being besieged by the popular Boxer ...

—comprising Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Britain and the United States—sent troops to relieve the siege of the foreigners and Chinese Christians in the Legation Quarters. The Allies forced the Qing government to sign the

Boxer Protocol The Boxer Protocol was a Protocol (diplomacy), diplomatic protocol signed in China's capital Beijing on September 7, 1901, between the Qing dynasty, Qing Empire of China and the Eight-Nation Alliance that had provided military forces (including ...

, which required the Qing government to pay 450 million

tael Tael ( ),"Tael" entry
at the

indemnity In contract law, an indemnity is a contractual obligation of one party (the ''indemnitor'') to compensate the loss incurred by another party (the ''indemnitee'') due to the relevant acts of the indemnitor or any other party. The duty to indemni ...

over a course of 39 years to the eight nations involved. Under the

exchange rate In finance, an exchange rate is the rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another currency. Currencies are most commonly national currencies, but may be sub-national as in the case of Hong Kong or supra-national as in the case of ...

s at the time, this was equal to US$335 million or £67 million. Including interest, the Qing finally paid 982,238,150 taels (equivalent to 37,000

short ton The short ton (abbreviation: tn or st), also known as the US ton, is a measurement unit equal to . It is commonly used in the United States, where it is known simply as a ton; however, the term is ambiguous, the single word "ton" being variously ...

s of silver), of which the U.S. share was 7.32%.

Return of excess indemnity

The nationwide boycott of American goods in China was precipitated by several interconnected factors: the residual impact of the Boxer Rebellion's failure, reported instances of mistreatment of Chinese immigrants in the United States, and the U.S. federal government's contradictory stance of renewing the Chinese Exclusion Act while advocating for the Open Door Policy in China. The movement had terrible consequences for American trade in China:

In ten months, $21,125,838 worth of cotton goods alone went from this country to the Chinese empire. Not only is this export trade menaced by a Chinese boycott, but our hold on much greater future development is practically given over to European nations. There are few interests in the United States that will not feel the pinch of a Chinese boycott in one way or another.

At the same time, Qing representative to the United States

Liang Cheng Liang Cheng (November 30, 1864 – February 3, 1917), courtesy name Liang Chentung, also known as Liang Pi Yuk, and later as Chentung Liang Cheng, was a Chinese ambassador to the United States during the Qing dynasty. He was primarily respons ...

learned that the terms of the

awarded the U.S. more than it had originally demanded and initiated a campaign to pressure the U.S. into returning the difference to China. In addition, American missionaries in China, sympathetic to the suffering of the average Chinese family, were clamoring for the return of the excess Boxer Indemnity. Roosevelt seized on this opportunity and set forth his intention to "do the Chinese justice about this indemnity" in his Atlanta speech where he declared: "we mericanscannot expect China to do us justice unless we do China justice". Roosevelt realized that if the United States were to help China and return the excess of the Boxer Indemnity while all the other powers were taking its territory and exploiting its people, "by a very small effort the good-will of the Chinese may be won over in a large and satisfactory way". However, the American minister to China

William Woodville Rockhill William Woodville Rockhill (April 1, 1854 – December 8, 1914) was a United States diplomat, best known as the author of the U.S.'s Open Door Policy for China, the first American to learn to speak Tibetan, and one of the West's leading exp ...

strongly opposed the idea of returning the money to the corrupted Qing government as he believed that the money would not escape their greed.

Establishment

Among the numerous proposals for the use of the remittance, Roosevelt inclined toward "cultural investment" through education, envisioning education as a bridge across the Pacific through which the United States could extend its influence to the Far East. As Japan and the European powers carved out spheres of influence in China, the conservative Qing government finally sought to study Western technology and adopt Western policies in order to reform China and meet the Western powers as equals. During that time, many of the Western-returned students such as Liang Cheng and Tang Shaoyi "formerly pushed to the margins of government and shunned due to their Western influence, were brought into power as the fortunes of reformers improved". In 1906, the President of the University of Illinois, Edmund J. James, who led the university from 1904 to 1920, proposed to President Theodore Roosevelt a plan to establish a scholarship program to send Chinese students to the U.S. James's 1906 letter noted to President Roosevelt,

China is upon the verge of a revolution ... The nation which succeeds in educating the young Chinese of the present generation will be the nation which for a given expenditure of effort will reap the largest possible returns in moral, intellectual and commercial influence.

However, the tendency in China at that time was to "adopt the policy of Japan, and so engage Japan as her instructor". As Japan's military and political influence developed rapidly, Roosevelt's administration could not allow the large influx of Chinese students to Japan continue rising and watch their Pacific rival take over China through intellectual domination. Therefore, he quickly "assented in April 1906 to the wisdom of Smith's proposal" and decided to establish the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program to "turn the current of Chinese students" to America. The following year Roosevelt expressed this message to the Senate and House of Representatives in his annual address:

Mr. Roosevelt announces the intention of the United States Government to release China from all payments in connection with the Boxer war indemnity in excess of the sum necessary for the actual indemnity to the United States… The United States, he adds, ‘should help in every practicable way in the education of the Chinese people, so that the vast and populous Empire of China may gradually adapt itself to modern conditions. One way of doing this is by promoting the coming of Chinese students to this country and making it attractive to them to take courses at our Universities and higher educational institutions. Our educators should, so far as possible, take concerted action toward this end.’

Although President Roosevelt claimed that his intention was to help China "adapt itself to modern conditions", he in fact aimed to direct reform in China by creating an influential group of American-educated-Chinese leaders. With China's reform-friendly environment, the American-returned students would occupy important positions in politics due to their knowledge of American bureaucracy. Their education in American high schools and colleges, which would take place at a formative period of their lives, would have "a substantial impact on their political, emotional and even physical development". They would have a special sentiment toward America and would be grateful to the U.S. government for their educational opportunities. Subsequently, they would seek to model the new China after the U.S. rather than Japan, and prefer American goods. As Liang Cheng, the Chinese minister to the U.S. stated, this group of students would be able to "insure a peace and trade in the Far East that treaties and military forces cannot insure". The impact of educational exchange could extend far beyond the educational field. It was, as Smith envisioned, the most "satisfactory and subtle" way to "reap the largest possible returns in moral, intellectual, and commercial influence", because "trade follows moral and spiritual domination far more inevitably than it follows the flag". The establishment of the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program was not only "an act of friendship" as Roosevelt claimed, it was also a cultural investment for bridging China with the U.S. and a farsighted scheme for peacefully controlling China's reform and development. Despite further proposals by the Chinese to use the funds within China, the settlement was made on American terms.

Development

The program, set up in 1909, funded the selection, preparatory training, transportation to the United States, and study for the scholarship beneficiaries. Part of the first remission of money included the establishment of a preparatory school in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

for Chinese graduates pursuing further studies at American universities. The preparatory school, established on 29 April 1911 on the site of a former royal garden, was named Tsinghua College (). The faculty members for sciences were recruited by the

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It has nearly 90,000 staff, some 920,000 volunteers and 12,000 branches w ...

from the United States and its graduates transferred directly to American schools as juniors upon graduation. The school was later expanded to offer four-year undergraduate and post-graduate programs and became

Tsinghua University Tsinghua University (THU) is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Constructio ...

. A second remission in 1924 provided for the establishment of the China Foundation (), which would in turn fund the China Institute in New York City in 1926. From 1909 to 1937, the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program sent around 1,300 Chinese students to study in the United States. Drawing candidates from across China, the examination process for this prestigious scholarship was highly competitive: among 630 candidates in 1909, only 47 were selected. In light of China's

Self-Strengthening Movement The Self-Strengthening Movement, also known as the Westernization or Western Affairs Movement (–1895), was a period of reforms initiated during the late Qing dynasty following the military disasters of the Opium Wars and Taiping Rebellion. The ...

during that time, the Qing government urged students to focus their studies on the fields on Science, Engineering, Agriculture, Medicine and Commerce. The

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(MIT) was thus one of the most popular destinations. In 1929, after Tsinghua had become a true university itself, the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program was opened to all candidates. A total of five groups of scholars were educated in the U.S. before the Japanese invasion of China in 1937.

Legacy

A number of prominent Chinese and

Chinese Americans Chinese Americans are Americans of Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans have ancestors from mainland China, Hong Kong ...

were beneficiaries of the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program, including MIT's first Chinese architect Kwan Sung-sing, philosopher

Hu Shih Hu Shih ( zh, t=胡適; 17 December 189124 February 1962) was a Chinese academic, writer, and politician. Hu contributed to Chinese liberalism and language reform, and was a leading advocate for the use of written vernacular Chinese. He part ...

, Nobel laureate Yang Chen-Ning, electrical engineer Lee Yuk-wing, mathematician Chung Kai-lai, linguist

Yuen Ren Chao Yuen Ren Chao (Chinese: 趙元任; 3 November 189225 February 1982), also known as Zhao Yuanren, was a Chinese-American linguist, educator, scholar, poet, and composer, who contributed to the modern study of Chinese phonology and grammar. Chao ...

, educator Kuo Ping-Wen, rocket scientist

Qian Xuesen Qian Xuesen ( zh, s=钱学森; December 11, 1911October 31, 2009; also spelled as Tsien Hsue-shen) was a Chinese aerospace engineer and cyberneticist who made significant contributions to the field of aerodynamics and established engineering ...

, meteorologist and scholar

Chu Coching Coching Chu (; March 7, 1890 – February 7, 1974), also romanized as Zhu Kezhen, was a Chinese geologist and meteorologist. Life and career Born in Shangyu, Zhejiang, Chu received his secondary education at the Tangshan School of Rail and ...

and architectural engineer Edward Y. Ying, who was influential in the planning of modern Shanghai. The scholarships served as a model for the

Fulbright Program The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people ...

's grants for international educational exchange. The remittance of excess payment and the establishment of the scholarship program also helped raise the international standing of the United States. In a letter to the Secretary of State John Hay, Liang Cheng, the Chinese minister to the United States wrote, "If your honorable country would take the lead n returning excess indemnity payments wherever the voice of righteousness spread, those countries would rise and follow it". As the leader of an emerging super power, Roosevelt recognized the remission of Boxer Indemnity as an chance for the U.S. to assume leadership position in the world. Roosevelt later claimed after the remission: "we have the right to hope that the return of these funds to China will stimulate European Powers to take action similar to that just suggested, and that generosity on our part will be met by similar unconditional remission by them". Roosevelt's act later yielded significant results. U.S's act of justice, friendship, and allowance greatly influenced other Powers:

Other governments, recognizing the beneficial effects of America's earlier action in this matter, are proposing to take a similar step. The Japanese Government has announced its decision to remit Japan's share of the indemnity. The French Government purposes to use its indemnity funds in the rehabilitation of a French bank in China. The British Government announced in December, 1922, that it would release its funds for purposes "mutually beneficial to Great Britain and to China…"

The remission of the Boxer Indemnity, as Roosevelt planned, helped the U.S. to not only dispel the embarrassment caused by the boycott, but also build its international image.

Notes

References

{{Tsinghua University Academic transfer Boxer Rebellion China–United States relations Education in China Scholarships in China Scholarships in the United States Student politics in China Tsinghua University