The soft power of United States education and the formation of a Chinese American intellectual community in Urbana-Champaign, 1905--1954

Chinese Intellectual migration to the United States from 1905 to 1954 was examined through a case study of the students who came to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) during this period. This research also studied the formation of a Chinese American intellectual community at UIUC during the same period by examining the policy initiated by President Edmund J. James and his successors that brought a very high percentage of Chinese students in the United States to UIUC. James's friendship with the Chinese minister to the United States, Wu Ting-feng, his innovative programs such as setting up the first foreign students' office in the nation and locating internship opportunities for Chinese graduates against the Chinese exclusion measures, and inexpensive high-quality education attracted Chinese students to the UIUC campus. During James's and Kinley's eras, an average of 18 percent of Chinese students in the United States studied at UIUC. James's policy had a long term effect on the overall enrollment of Chinese students, for instance, up to the 1960s, UIUC produced the highest numbers of Chinese Ph.D.s in the United States.;UIUC graduated its first Chinese Ph.D., Chin-chun Wang in 1910. During his life time, Wang maintained a very close relationship with his mentor, David Kinley. They kept a correspondence for 30 years which served as the primary source to piece together the life of a Chinese railway engineer and manager.;The result of James's open door policy to Chinese students was analyzed through several famous Chinese alumni's biographies to trace the influence and impact of their education at the UIUC on their lives to evaluate the overall achievement of the Sino-American educational exchange and its relationship to the development of Chinese American intellectual community in the United States. The changing relation of Chinese students in the United States to their homeland in different periods are analyzed as well as their efforts at community building on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. At the end, the experience of a group of seven Chinese students who studied at UIUC from 1943 to 1954 were analyzed through a joined memoir they published in 1999 to trace the formation of their community after 1949.