Research Projects

Shanghai’s Role in Sino-US Education Exchanges

Principal Investigator

Li Cheng, Hamilton College

Project Description

This research project examined Shanghai as a case in the transformation of city spaces in the post-reform era. Using biographical data collected on 800 professionals and administrators in Shanghai, the team explored new conceptual tools to break a mindset that had posed socialism against capitalism, cosmopolitanism against localism and tradition against modernity. In November 2003, the project hosted a two-day international conference at Fudan University to discuss Sino-American educational exchange on the 25th anniversary of China’s open-door policy. Richard Levin, President of Yale University, delivered the opening speech. At the conference, more than twenty distinguished scholars from universities in China, Hong Kong and North America presented their ideas on educational exchange, institution building and Chinese returnees in human resource terms. The conference attracted administrative attention and received wide media coverage. Li Cheng edited selected papers from the conference, which were published as a volume entitled Bridging Minds across the Pacific: US-China Educational Exchanges, 1978 – 2003 (Lexington Books, 2005).

Bridging Minds across the Pacific: US-China Educational Exchanges