Research On Policies Of Studying Abroad In Late Qing Dynasty

In late Qing Dynasty, the Chinese confronted with the lash of western culture and underwent the painful choices. The appearance of studying abroad was the outcome in that age and was the important access for China to turn modernization into reality. Centering on the cause of appearance, characteristics of content,assessment of results, this paper summarized the prons and cons of policies of studying abroad in late Qing Dynasty in order to benefit for the studying abroad nowadays.The policies of studying abroad in Westernization Movement period embodied the guiding ideology of "Chinese leaning as the fundermental structure, Western learning for pratical use" of Qing government. Owing to the contradiction of "Chinese leaning as the fundermental structure" and "Western leaning for pratical use",the policy of first sending children to America mismarried. No doubt it was the fault of Qing government to withdraw children from America, but, on the other hand, it showed that sending children to America is not perfect. After summarizing the experience and lessons, Qing government completed and developed the policy of sending students to Europe and implemented it all along.During the period of "New Policies"in late Qing Dynasty, stimulated directly by the failure in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Qing government advocated studying abroad to Japan through various measures, such as sending out nationally or locally and at public expense or at one's own expense, giving posts to returned students, abolishing imperied examination system, increasing the number of students and reducing their time of studying abroad ,encouraging the government officials to study abroad. But with the broadening in scale day by day, the disadvantages of poor quality appeared, which resulted from no limits for qualifications andshortening the time for studying abroad. For this reason, Qing government had to turn the active encouragement into strict limits.During the period of "New Polices", the policy of sending "Boxer Indemnity" students had been influenced by cultural invasion of western countries. These students were strictly selected and the period of studying was prolonged, they put emphasis on industry, when they retured, they made a greater contribution to natural science in our country.Although these policies advanced greatly chinese modernization, there existed many serious problems, such as the deviation in the education target, the confusion in the qualification to select students, unstable and short policies, from which we could draw historical experience and lessons.At last, concentrating on the problem so far in studying abroad, such as studying abroad but not returning and studying abroad from the children, this paper analyzed and evaluated from historical point of view in order to give lessons to the education of studying abroad nowadays.