By: Daniel Guo, VI Form

Transpacific Scholars: A Journey Through the Boxer Indemnity

Editor’s Note: This paper was completed as part of a History Research Fellowship, a one-semester course available to sixth form students, where students write a historical research paper about their chosen topic.

Over the past two decades, the number of Chinese students in the United States has seen a remarkable surge, growing from a modest original number of around 20,000 students in 1991 to an enormous student body of more than 300,000 in 2021. Since 2009, Chinese students have consistently represented the highest portion of international students, making up nearly a third of all international students in American colleges and universities. These Chinese students choose to pursue a wide range of subjects and academic disciplines such as engineering, English, and law in the many different educational institutions that the United States offers, including prestigious universities such as Harvard and Yale. However, due to recent geopolitical tensions between China and the United States, the drive for Chinese students to study in the United States has diminished, with many turning to other prestigious schools in the United Kingdom and Europe instead.

This shift away from Chinese students in the United States is not just unique to the Chinese perspective: a Pew Research Center survey indicates that 55%, a majority of Americans surveyed, support limiting Chinese students studying in the United States. One in five Americans strongly supports limiting Chinese students in the United States. This situation is seemingly targeted specifically towards Chinese students, as the majority of Americans view international students favorably, with 80% of Americans expressing a positive opinion towards them.

As the current educational relationship between Chinese students and America has become a focal point for geopolitical issues and debates, it is essential to revisit the history of these students in the United States—starting from the earliest Chinese Educational Mission to the eventual formation of the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship, which served as the earliest, complete educational mission of Chinese students in the United States. This paper analyzes the historical development of the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship, which ran from 1909-1929, examining how it transformed from a reparations payment into a significant educational exchange program, and assesses its long-term impact on Chinese development, including the Chinese military, government, and education.

The first section of the paper provides essential context to the history of Chinese educational missions in the United States. Before the Boxer Rebellion, the very first instance of Chinese students studying in the United States was the Chinese Educational Mission led by Yung Wing. However, concerns about the students losing their Chinese identities and becoming too American led to the premature termination of their mission. Shortly After, the Boxer Rebellion erupted, and following its suppression by the Eight-Nation Alliance, the Qing government was forced to pay all participating nations a series of indemnities. Considering these indemnities excessive, the United States decided to return the excess funds as an educational fund to promote friendship with China, thus giving rise to the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship.

The following section of the paper goes into detail on the perspectives of the scholarship, focusing on the daily lives and personal opinions of students during their time studying in the United States. Aside from the purely educational and professional trajectories of these students, many of these students were involved in a series of extracurricular activities and organizations. This section of the paper utilizes a set of New York Times articles as well as monthly Chinese student publications to provide a complete, primary source of both the Chinese and American perspectives on the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship.

The final section of the paper analyzes the students who participated in the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship through a wide variety of sources and tools. Data analysis was conducted with ChatGPT using a book titled Who’s Who of American Returned Students, which contains records of the students who studied in the United States during this period, including both the Chinese Educational Mission and the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship. This section dives into an analysis of the students’ birthplaces, educational backgrounds, future career destinations, and occupations, as well as other important venues of information. By providing a comprehensive image of the students who benefited from the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship, this study can gain valuable insights and knowledge of its success or failure and how it relates to the current global landscape.

After receiving his early education at the mission school in Canton, Yung Wing became the first Chinese man to graduate from an American university in 1854 from Yale University. As the first Chinese man to graduate, he was too aware of the widespread ignorance that was more prevalent in China as compared to the Western world. Many Chinese continued to hold antiquated and superstitious beliefs of spirits and demons, and the primary educational focus continued to be the Confucius studies that offered little practical utility to a nation striving to modernize in a new Industrial Age. Due to Qing China’s continued losses to European powers in the First and Second Opium Wars because of technological disparities, it began to embark on a slow journey of modernization, including reforms in the educational system. As part of the modernization efforts in the Qing’s Self-Strengthening Movement, the Tong Wen Guan was opened in 1861, a government school which hired foreign teachers to teach a series of subjects such as foreign languages, chemistry, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and law. Recognizing the importance of Western education for Chinese students and riding the waves of the Self-Strengthening movement, the aforementioned Yung Wing proposed to the Qing government a mission for Chinese students to study in the United States. His proposal was eventually accepted in 1872, and the first cohort of Chinese students, ages ranging from ten to fourteen, began arriving in the United States. They stayed with local families in New England and entered into nearby schools such as Hartford High, Phillips Andover, and Phillips Exeter. These boys excelled academically and athletically, but the Qing government eventually decided to pull these students back in 1881, fearing that these students were becoming too Americanized and forgetting their Chinese heritage, as some of the students had converted to Christianity during their time in the United States.

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Daniel Guo is a VI form boarding student from Northborough, MA. Daniel enjoys reading, writing, and playing a variety of sports.