376 { China’s Quest
Re-Engaging Global Communities of KnowledgeSending students and scholars to advanced capitalist countries for higher ed-
ucation and research was another core dimension of China’s opening to the
outside world. During the decade of 1950 to 1960, more than 38,000 Chinese
had studied at Soviet universities, research institutes, or factories. Of that
number, 6,561 had matriculated at Soviet institutions of higher learning.^47
After the break with Moscow, educational exchanges withered and then col-
lapsed altogether during the Cultural Revolution. During the decade and
a half between the break with Moscow and 1978, very few Chinese studied
or conducted research abroad. None did so in the United States, the leading
global supplier of higher education services. This changed with China’s
opening. Late in 1978, the first group of fifty Chinese students and scholars
arrived in the United States.^48 Numbers rose rapidly, peaking at over 5,000 in- As indicated by Figure 13-3, during the first five years of the new PRC-US
relation, over 19,000 PRC students and scholars came to the United States for
university study or advanced research.
In the early period of opening, most students and scholars were approved
and financially supported by work units in China. Chinese students quickly
learned to avail themselves of funding opportunities available to foreign stu-
dents from US universities and foundations, however, and soon some forty
ercent of financial support for these students was provided by American insti-
tutions. Two-thirds of PRC students who enrolled in US universities during
this period did so in natural, physical, or life sciences; engineering; or math.
Among all foreign students studying at US universities, only 8 percent choose
these fields. This emphasis on hard sciences reflected the priorities of the Four
Modernizations.
By the mid-1980s, a brain drain problem had emerged. A large percentage
of the outstanding human talent China was sending abroad to study were
1978 50
1979 1,330
1980 4,324
1981 5,407
1982 4,480
1983 4,331
total 19,922F IGU R E 13-3 PRC Students and Scholars in
the United States, 1978–1983
Source: David M. Lampton, A Relationship
Restored, Trends in U.S.–China Educational
Exchanges, 1978–1984, (National Academy Press:
Washington, D.C., 1986), p. 32. Based on Consular
report of U.S. Department of State.