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“The nation which succeeds in educating the young Chinese of the present generation will be the nation which for a given expenditure of effort will reap the largest possible returns in moral, intellectual, and commercial influence.” https://twitter.com/sixthtone/status/1289078525652336642
I should clarify that the above quote is not from the author ( @JingjianWu) but Edmund James, the then president of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, in a 1905 letter to Roosevelt (the then President of the United States) regarding the Boxer Indemnity:
As Wu points out, "Thanks to the Chinese Exclusion Act and virulent anti-immigration sentiment, Chinese students were essentially barred from taking up employment in the U.S. after graduation..."
"...The immigration cap was set at just 100 immigrants from China per year, compared with 50,000 from Germany."
James discusses this fact in his letter, clarifying that, "We may not admit the Chinese laborer, but we can treat the Chinese student decently and extend to him the facilities of our institutions of learning" :
In the letter, James explicitly makes a case for academic exchange rather than immigration, arguing that this will benefit the economic interests of Americans:
Interestingly, he raises the possibility of finding employment for graduates of the University of Illinois *in China* twice in the letter, above and here:
Po-shek Fu has discussed the outcome and legacy of James' China Commission here (paywall): https://brill.com/view/journals/jaer/24/1/article-p27_3.xml
And Upton has, in turn summarized and discussed Fu's article here: https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/1095671/h-diplo-article-review-732-%E2%80%9Ctrans-pacific-cultural-connections
And Upton has, in turn summarized and discussed Fu's article here: https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/1095671/h-diplo-article-review-732-%E2%80%9Ctrans-pacific-cultural-connections
Upton also touches on the 2017 kidnapping and murder of the Chinese scientist and visiting scholar at the University of Illinois, Yingying Zhang 章莹颖, by a former student of the university
One outcome of this tragedy was that in 2018 U of I took out a a $424,000 insurance policy (with 60 million in coverage) in the event of a 20 percent drop in revenue from Chinese students https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/11/29/university-illinois-insures-itself-against-possible-drop-chinese-enrollments
(U of I, of course, has claimed that they came up with the idea in 2015, to protect against " things like a visa restriction, a pandemic, a trade war -- something like that that was outside of our control")
More positively, in 2019 Zhang's family set up an endowment fund in her memory at U of I to "support international students in moments of crisis" https://will.illinois.edu/news/story/our-life-turned-upside-down-family-of-yingying-zhang-creates-fund-to-help-others
You can donate to the fund (which has raised $66,442 to date) here:
https://with.illinois.edu/2281867-2/?cfpage=project&project_id=29618
https://with.illinois.edu/2281867-2/?cfpage=project&project_id=29618
And James' original 1905 letter to Roosevelt is here: https://digital.library.illinois.edu/items/c60c4b30-455a-0135-3563-0050569601ca-3
