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College Admissions, International Competition, and the Cold War in Asia: The Case of Overseas Chinese Students in Taiwan in the 1950s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Ting-Hong Wong
Ting-Hong Wong*
Affiliation:
Sociology Institute of Academia Sinica in Taiwan
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Abstract

Focusing only on education exchanges between the United States and other countries, existing scholarship fails to illuminate how American-sponsored student migrations between other countries helped expand U.S. hegemony. This article attempts to rectify this limitation by looking at Taiwan's policies on overseas Chinese students (qiaosheng) in the 1950s. After the debacle of the Chinese Civil War and its retreat to Taiwan, the Kuomintang (KMT) sought to solicit overseas Chinese support and to counter Communist China's drive for “returning students.” The KMT-developed qiaosheng program faced difficulties until 1954, when the United States, seeing that Taiwan's project could serve its anti-Communist plan, started bankrolling the qiaosheng program, thereby enabling the KMT to lure more students away from Communist China. These findings suggest that overlooking U.S.-sponsored student migrations between nations outside the United States renders our analysis of international education exchanges and American imperialism incomplete.

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Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , May 2016 , pp. 331 - 357
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 History of Education Society 

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122 The National Taiwan University to Young Lions News Agency, 30 May 1956, NTU file 0045/2400300/012/0001/005.Google Scholar

123 Ministry of Education to the National Taiwan University, 9 April 1957; and National Taiwan University to the Ministry of Education, 15 May 1957. Both from NTU file 0046/2400300/013/0001.Google Scholar

124 Figures derived from “Linian baosong kaochu ji shiji huiguo shengxue rensu” [Annual Statistics on Qiashengs Getting Admissions Offers and Overseas Students Who Accepted Such Offers and Attended Schools in Taiwan], Bainian Shuren [Education: A Hundred Years Project] (Taipei: Huaqiao chubianshe, 1967).Google Scholar

125 I write “various professional fields in Chinese communities throughout Asia” here because the general impression is that most qiaoshengs were employed by schools, business companies, and media operated by the Chinese after returning to their home countries.Google Scholar

126 “Daizhuan biye qiaosheng dongtai bijiao” [Statistics on Qiaoshengs Returning to Homelands, Going to Foreign Countries for Employment or Education, and Staying in Taiwan after Graduation], Bainian Shuren. Google Scholar

127 “Daizhuan biye qiaosheng jiuye leibie” [Occupations of Qiaoshengs after Graduation], Bainian Shuren. Google Scholar