The Ideological and Political Impact of U.S. Fulbrighters on Chinese Students: 1979–1989

Abstract

I n the late 1970s Chinese leaders realized that to attain its Four Modernizations in science and technology, i dustry, agriculture, and efense, China had to open its educational system to developments in the outside world. The year 1979 saw China opening its doors to foreigners, especially teachers from the West. Universities and colleges all over China were inviting American, Canadian, British, French, German, and other European teachers into their classrooms, mostly to teach basic foreign language courses. In fall 1979 the government of the People's Republic of China formally requested American assistance in the recruitment and support of between twenty and thirty specialists in English language teaching over a three-year period. The Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), a private agency cooperating with the U.S. government in the administration of Fulbright Scholar grants for advanced research and university teaching, selected four Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) specialists and assigned them to Beijing University in March 1980. For the first time since 1949 American scholars selected solely on the basis of their academic qualifications taught regularly enrolled Chinese university students. After 1980, the number of American Fulbrighters teaching in China increased substantially, and by 1989 the China Fulbright program was one of the largest in the world, with twenty-four American professors teaching on Chinese campuses and a like number of Chinese graduate students and scholars studying at U.S. universities. Did American Fulbrighters have a noticeable impact