As a former engineering school dean, I found one statistical chart particularly captivating amid the torrent of recent newspaper and magazine articles on the emergence of China as an economic giant. It detailed the number of engineering bachelor’s degrees conferred by institutions in different countries in 1999. The United States conferred a very respectable 61,000 degrees that year. China conferred 195,000, far outpacing every other nation.
Those numbers symbolize the great promise and challenge China presents to the rest of the world this century. The ramifications of China’s booming development—on the world economy, the global workforce, the geopolitical balance and the future of the environment—are enormous. I believe that American universities should play a dual role in helping to understand the implications of China’s growing economic power and preparing our students for collaboration between our two countries in business, government and education.
I will travel to China this May to inaugurate our Stanford in Beijing program and hold a series of meetings with Chinese education officials and business leaders. This trip underscores the growing importance of Stanford’s relationship with the world’s most populous country.
The reasons for that increased focus are both philosophical and practical. China will rapidly become a powerhouse in information technology and biotechnology. Stanford has much to offer and teach in these areas—and we have much to gain in the long term. But it is clear that the institutions that take a seat at the table earliest will most influence this historic period.
Fortunately for Stanford, we have very deep roots in China. The tradition of devoting intellectual resources to East Asia dates back to the founding of the University. And more recently, Stanford was one of the first institutions to establish a mechanism for intellectual exchange with scholars from the People’s Republic of China, hosting its first group of Chinese scholars in 1978.
Those exchanges were critical in Stanford’s further development of East Asian scholarship, a tradition that is now carried out more formally at the Stanford Institute for International Studies and in such areas as the BA and MA programs in East Asian Studies. As a result, the University has been home to pathbreaking work in numerous areas, such as sociologist Andrew Walder’s work on political movements in China and political scientist Jean Oi’s research on corporate governance and fiscal reform.
Building on work he began as secretary of defense, Professor William Perry, ’49, remains in the forefront of strengthening “track two” diplomatic relationships in both Russia and the People’s Republic of China. In this work, he aims to develop strategies, influence thinking among leaders in Russia and China and organize resources that might help resolve international conflicts. Research on China also exemplifies Stanford’s growing multidisciplinary approach. In that vein, Thomas Heller of the Law School, Michael May of the Center for International Security and Cooperation and David Victor of the Center for Environmental Science and Policy have worked on issues related to Chinese energy development.
Stanford is also home to a tremendous collection of reference and source material about China. The University’s East Asia Library Chinese collection contains approximately 262,000 titles in 350,000 volumes, plus another 28,300 reels of microfilm. In addition, the Hoover Institution’s East Asia Archives and Collections of Special Materials in Chinese and Japanese consist of original documents, such as letters, diaries, journals, private and public contracts, and business account books.
Stanford in Beijing is one small way that we are furthering our desire to engage in an ongoing conversation and deepen our understanding about China. Courses will be taught in English and Chinese by local faculty members of Peking University in areas such as philosophy, history of science, political science, legal studies and literature. Required Chinese language courses will also be offered for Stanford credit.
Of course, Stanford already benefits tremendously from the presence of more than 500 gifted Chinese students at the Farm. This exchange is consistent with our view that the best way to solve the world’s problems is to have an open conversation among the best and brightest of the next generation of scholars.
In all these ways, I believe Stanford is well positioned to participate in China’s emergence onto the center of the world stage in the 21st century. In that regard, perhaps the best thing Stanford and other American universities have to offer is the spirit of unfettered academic inquiry and debate—the open competition of ideas—that has helped build the American system of higher education into one that is admired throughout the world.
