Network Public Diplomacy and the 100,000 Strong Educational Exchange

The US has many successful educational exchange programs in China. For example, the Fulbright Program and the Peace Corps are both exchange programs that promote English language learning and increase mutual understanding. Generally speaking, China had been an importer on language learning. However, this situation has changed due to China’s rise in recent years. The demand of Mandarin language learning has gone up rapidly outside China. The founding of Confucius Institution in 2004 signified China had become an exporter of Mandarin learning. However, in contrast to the large number of Chinese students studying in the US, the number of American students studying in China has been low. According to the data from the Institute of International Education, there were 202,522 Chinese students studying in the US from 2011 to 2012, but there were only 15,647 American students studying in China during the same time. This huge gap indicates the unbalanced status of educational exchange between the two countries. In order to address this issue, US President Obama proposed the 100,000 Strong Initiative during his visit to China in 2009. It is a worldwide campaign, but the first target country is China. The Initiative aims to increase the number of students studying abroad in China to 100,000 and increases the diversity of the student body.

Promoting Mandarin and Chinese study abroad programs should be the mission of Chinese public diplomacy, why it is the US that advocates this? Considering it through the lens of US foreign policy, the US State Department has been putting much emphasis on soft/smart power. The 100,000 Strong Initiative was brought up when Hilary Clinton was the Secretary of State. She intentionally uses the concept of US soft power/smart power when dealing with other countries. One distinctive character of the US foreign policy strategy at the time and maybe now has been looking for opportunities for the US to collaborate with other countries on common interests. For example, at an event hosted by the State Department that I attended, officials working on China told the audience that they have been working with the Chinese side to address the issue of intellectual property rights, because they see it as an opportunity that both parties can gain from establishing policies to protect the interests of small enterprises in innovative industries both in the US and China. Educational exchange is another area where the interests of the two countries can join. 

In addition to the policy-making level, the material motive from the business world has also played a role. China has become the second largest economy in 2010. Its vibrant economy has attracted many investors and businessmen around the world. China’s large population has also provided a natural market for global business. In order to invest and trade with China, American companies need more talents who understand both cultures. Therefore, the demand for more talents who know the language and the country has increased dramatically. Moreover, since the two countries have distinct social and cultural backgrounds, cultural and language barriers in social encounters between the two cultures will inevitably bring problems. The huge difference between China and the US thus reinforced the importance of talent cultivation. However, in terms of talent pool, there are more Chinese students who understand the US comparing to American students who understand China. This becomes an urgent issue for the US side to advocate the need to increase the number of Americans studying abroad in China.

The 100,000 Strong Foundation was created under the need of “expand and diversify the number of Americans studying Mandarin and studying abroad in China.” It is a non-profit and non-government organization to execute the Initiative. Although it is named as a “foundation,” its main duty is not providing scholarships directly to American students. What they have been doing is building a social network around the idea of the 100,000 Strong. Manuel Castells pointed out in his book The Rise of the Network Society that “Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies.” The society consists of different networks and those networks consist of interactive nodes. Nodes are players in the social networks. According to Castells, “what a node is depends on the kind of concrete networks of which we speak.” In this particular case, the nodes are organizations and students that the 100,000 Strong Foundation connects under its umbrella. Castells’ network society theory has provided a new angle to look at public diplomacy. While producing new public diplomacy campaigns and programs, we can also connect and organize the existing PD resources and make accomplishments with half the effort. The100,000 Strong Foundation is embracing the trend of globalization and Internet by looking at US-China educational exchange from the lens of network society.

The100,000 Strong Foundation has been building a social network around the idea of 100,000 American students studying in China. They connect the institutions and organizations that previously operated independently to partner for a same objective. Ms. Carola McGiffert, the President of the 100,000 Strong Foundation, told me during my interview with her, “The function of the 100,000 Strong Foundation is to build a platform for people to understand the importance of US-China relationship and let more American students to learn Mandarin and study in China.” Before the founding of the 100,000 Strong Foundation, the organizations now in the “100K Strong network” had been running individually for some time. The Foundation came not as a new study-abroad program, but to facilitate and maintain the success models of these existing organizations, and build a network so that they are able to connect and work together. In this way, they avoid wasting social resource from unnecessary competitions. When more and more players take part in this network, ideally they will achieve a win-win situation among institutions and governments.

Although the funding for the 100,000 Strong Foundation has been coming from private sectors, the Foundation does have government backgrounds because it builds on the President’s initiative. It also values the interpersonal relationships with government officials. It was launched by Hilary Clinton. It also works closely with its advisory council members, some of whom are present or former government officials. It reaches out to entrepreneurs and philanthropists. Recently, Steve Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO and Co-founder of Blackstone and an advisory council member of the 100,000 Strong Foundation sponsored the Schwarzman Scholars program in Beijing Tsinghua University to rival Rhodes Scholarship. Both the US and China political leaders have openly supported the program. Dr. Louis Goodman, Professor and Dean Emeritus at American University and a member of the Schwarzman Scholars program advisory board, told me during an interview, “If we consider the two-week short-term study abroad programs are at the lower end of educational exchanges, the Schwarzman Scholars program is at the higher end. It will become the model for the future US-China educational exchange.”

Besides connecting important figures, the 100,000 Strong network also values the relations among students. American students are nodes of this network not only as benefiters, but also influencers. The 100,000 Strong Foundation partners with Project Pengyou, an online alumni social network to connect American students who have studied or are studying in China. By connecting them through an online social networking platform, students are able to share their experience and knowledge of study abroad in China. Project Pengyou is a non-profit organization based in Beijing. Ms. Holly Chang, head of the program, told me that the partnership between Project Pengyou and the 100,00 Strong Foundation is informal. They provide supports for the Foundation by engaging the network of programs, directors of programs, as well as students on the ground. Project Pengyou is not just a social network website, it also plans to build an online resource accessible to potential students who want to study in China. Schools and companies that want to hire American interns can also post their announcement through the website.

What Project Pengyou has been doing is building an individual level network. We can consider it as a sub-network under the overarching 100,00 Strong network. The nodes here include students, schools/universities, and companies. Ms. Chang herself also recognizes the role of Project Pengyou as connecting the dots. She said, “It is not like they [programs on the ground] are completely isolated to begin with. We’re providing an online and visual way for them to connect even further. We are really just complimenting a lot of the efforts that have been going on on the ground.” Project Pengyou is now working with Hopkins-Nanjing Center to build a new function on the website—bulletin board, allowing students and teachers to have a virtual place to communicate.

Besides connecting people, the 100,000 Strong Foundation also works with other organizations not only promoting study abroad in China, but also boosting Mandarin education in the US, especially diversifying the student body. Another partner of the Foundation is i.am.angel Foundation. i.am.angel provides scholarships for students in need. The 100,000 Strong Foundation works with them to provide Mandarin courses in Boyle Heights Center in Los Angeles. In this way, students in the neighborhood are offered with opportunities to engage with Chinese language and culture, which paves them the way to eventually study abroad in China. Recently, the 100,000 Strong Foundation have expanded their connections to other educational organizations such as American Association of State Colleges and Universities, Americans Promoting Study Abroad, Asia Society China Scholars, China Institute, Community Colleges for International Development, Teach for China. Moreover, the 100,000 Strong Foundation is housed in the School of International Service at American University, which has broad and mature study abroad programs. The Foundation also partners with scholarship providers such as the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.

The 100,000 Strong Foundation has existed for only several months, and the social network of study abroad in China is still taking shape, but by mapping the network nodes we can see it includes major parties in the US-China education exchange. As a part of US public diplomacy, the 100,000 Strong Initiative and Foundation are encouraging American students to learn about another language and culture, rather than promoting American culture to the world. Their approach is building a social network based on the mutual interests of both countries, in which all nodes connect and coordinate with each other. The network also creates division of labor among the connected organizations and individuals, which place influence on each other as well. The role of government is to facilitate and control its course. The US government has quite a lot of experience of partnering with non-governmental forces in civil society, using their resource and power to execute the government’s plan. With the current debt ceiling debate and the general economy slowdown, it is not only smart but also necessary to connect and organize the existing public diplomacy resources so that the network altogether can play a bigger role and exerts more impacts. More importantly, the public diplomacy program is self-sustained in this way. The government then will have to make sure that it is going in the right direction and the specific interests of particular node should not in conflict with the overall goal.