The Role of American Ngos in China's Modernization: Invited Influence by Norton Wheeler

Author:Norton Wheeler [Wheeler, Norton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, International Relations, General, American Government, World, Asian
ISBN: 9781138022751
Google: PFw0ngEACAAJ
Goodreads: 18816675
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

Training civil society leaders at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center

While only six to seven percent of international or Chinese alumni go on to work for NGOs, those who do so have been visible beyond their numbers in the Center’s semi-annual alumninewsletter, Centerpiece, and on the Alumni Update page of its website.101 In view of the expansion of civil society activity in and between the United States and China, these individuals’ influence within their respective societies and on the bilateral relationship may also be disproportionate to their numbers. A 2003 issue of the Hopkins-Nanjing alumninewsletter profiled eight international students, whose post-Center careers took them to such organizations as the US–China Business Council, the Asia Foundation, and the Energy Foundation’s China Sustainable Energy Program in Beijing.102 And the National Committee has had Hopkins-Nanjing alumni (often two or three at a time) on its staff continuously since the turn of the century.103

A Chinese alumna (2000), after earning a master’s degree, became one of the first program staff members at Junior Achievement China, then a staff writer at China Development Brief. From there, she went to rural Sichuan Province to work on public health programs with Partnerships for Community Development, a Hong Kong-based community development organization. These NGO experiences reinforced her sense of ‘the positive changes that can be achieved if people partake in the public life of their society and take initiative on their own to solve public problems.’104 Another Chinese alumna (2001) also worked at Junior Achievement, which exposed her to the concept of an NGO. ‘Despite the fact that many Chinese do not yet fully appreciate the role of NGOs and volunteerism,’ she said, ‘I believe the work I am doing will make a difference on the next generation and on Chinese society as a whole.’105

American alumnus Travis Tanner (2002) wanted ‘to involve myself in a professional role in the field of US–China relations.’ After completing the certificate program at the Center, he went on to earn an MA from SAIS and to become assistant director of Chinese Studies at the Nixon Center. Joseph Casey found that he could ‘help China to better develop while concurrently developing myself’ by working for the poverty-relief NGO World Vision, first in Beijing and then in Yunan.106

The post-Hopkins-Nanjing Center career of Yang Xuedong, a 1994 Chinese alumnus, has been particularly interesting with respect to both China’s modernization and US–China relations. The Center influenced Yang’s intellectual development and his professional training. His course work, especially independent study with political scientist James Thompson, gave him a solid foundation in comparative politics. This experience prepared Yang to study for six months as a visiting scholar at Harvard in 1997 and for the 2001–2 academic year at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. It also helped prepare him to assume operational responsibility for an imaginative Ford Foundation-funded project.107

Since the resumption of relations between China and the United States, the Ford Foundation’s approach has been well matched with China’s desire to obtain foreign technical assistance with minimal foreign control. The Foundation’s former country

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