Source: China Daily

The $300 million scholarship fund for foreign students to study in China launched by US private equity tycoon Stephen Schwarzman represents a “remarkably ambitious” effort to boost understanding of China by the United States and other Western nations, an executive member of the Asia Society said.

“For Americans looking beyond their shores, there is no nation that matters more than China, no relationship that matters more than the US-China relationship, and, frankly, no place where there’s a more profound need for greater understanding,” Tom Nagorski, the society’s executive vice-president, told China Daily.

Schwarzman, founder and chairman of New York-based Blackstone Group LP, announced the scholarship on Sunday at a ceremony in Beijing.

Beginning in 2016, the program will send 200 mainly US students to Beijing’s Tsinghua University each year.

Schwarzman, whose net worth has been estimated by Forbes at $6.5 billion, will donate $100 million of his own money to the project and raise an additional $200 million from blue-chip companies that already have signed on as donors.

The project, which organizers called the largest philanthropic effort with foreign money in China’s history, will pay for full scholarships, along with a building to house the program at Tsinghua, the alma mater for both President Xi Jinping and former President Hu Jintao.

Schwarzman told the ceremony his aim is to spur greater understanding of China by the US and other Western nations, and to end in particular Americans’ “isolated” view of China.

Most Americans, Schwarzman declared, “know next to nothing about China”. Xi and US President Barack Obama praised the gift in statements read at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose 1971 China visit opened diplomatic relations, said in a videotaped message he hoped the program would influence future “international discourse and diplomacy”.

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