China's First Experiment in Overseas Education, 1872-1881

One hundred and thirty-five years ago, in the summer of 1872, something extraordinary began in Shanghai. Dressed in their best silk garments, 30 Chinese boys, averaging 13 years of age, boarded a paddle-wheel steamer to take them across the vast Pacific to the United States of America ─ there to begin 15 years of schooling and vocational training. And all this at their government's expense. Over the next three summers, three more groups of 30 boys set out on the same journey. For the first time in China’s long history, this deeply conservative country, proud of its ancient traditions of learning and culture, was sending its sons abroad to be educated.

Beset by the military and economic domination of the Western colonial powers, China had been forced to open up the country to foreign trade and settlements in the so-called Treaty Ports. The dispatch of the 120 students on what was called the Chinese Educational Mission (CEM) was a belated effort by the government of the Qing dynasty to stem the growing tide of aggression: harness the aggressors’ know-how and technology to defeat them at their own game. In America the pioneering students would acquire expertise in Western languages, culture and science, and after completing their training, they would return to the homeland to provide the military, industrial and governmental leadership required to direct China’s efforts to modernize and strengthen itself.

That was the original goal—but after only nine years of operation, the experiment was terminated. Why did the Chinese authorities pull the plug? How did the "boy students" fare in their living and learning abroad? And how did they turn out after the Mission came to a premature end? What was their impact, if any, on China's modernization effort in the subsequent decades? Was the Mission a failed experiment? Please visit our site for some answers and opinions…

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