Talking Points

September 9 - 22, 2014
 

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Dear Zhenying: 

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! 中秋节愉快!The harvest moon is upon us and it's a time for families and friends to gather, for businesspeople to settle accounts, and for the sharing of smiles and mooncakes. Tonight, we mark the occasion at the USC Pacific Asia Museum.

Many Chinese and Americans will, in the words of the Tang dynasty poet Li Bai

李白, look at the moon, and think of a distant home（举头望明月，低头思故乡）. Over 300,000 are far from their families, studying in each other's country.

There are three principal sources of data on such students, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement（ICE）, the Institute for International Education（IIE）, and the Chinese Scholarship Council（SCS）. Their information is gathered in different ways and their numbers vary. ICE offers real time information whereas the others lag by a year or two. The chart above is based on IIE data and shows how Chinese enrollments climbed rapidly after 2006. In 2009, China passed India to become the top supplier of foreign students to the U.S.

According to ICE, in September 2013, there were 291,009 Chinese studying in American universities, colleges, and secondary schools. Over 90% were enrolled in higher education programs and as of July 2014 almost 45,000 of those students were in California, the most popular destination. The main subjects studied by Chinese are business and engineering.

Most Chinese in the U.S. study in large urban areas such as Los Angeles, New York, and Boston. But many can be found in relatively small places such as Lafayette/West Lafayette, Indiana home to Purdue University and other schools.In 2013, Purdue had the largest number of students from China, 4,323, including over 3,000 studying at the undergraduate level.

Some older graduate students and visiting scholars bring spouses and children. In 2013, the total number of Chinese coming to the U.S. via study programs totaled 391,068. 

A recent report from the Council on Graduate Applications noted that grad school applications from China had dropped by 1-3% each year over the past two years, after increasing 19-21% each year over the previous two years. Is study in the U.S. losing its luster for Chinese? It doesn't seem so as more and more students enroll in international-oriented high school programs in China and prepare for the SAT rather than the gaokao, or Chinese higher education entrance exam. At USC and elsewhere, we are seeing a rapid increase in the number of Chinese undergraduate applications and admissions. Of USC's 3,689 students from China in 2013, 716 were undergraduates. In 2010, fewer than half than many undergrads（327）were from China.   

Where do these students come from? According to a recent Brooking Institution report, most Chinese students in the U.S. come from Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan, and Shenzhen.

As the chart above indicates, comparatively few Americans study in China. Americans, though, make up the second largest group with China's international student population. South Koreans are number one. The number of Americans has been increasing steadily, though there's still a long way to go before the 100,000 goal set by President Barack Obama can be reached. It's worth noting, that about 5% of Americans who study abroad are now going to China. In 2000, only 1.9% went to China. 

Especially during weak economic times, the challenge isn't just getting Americans to go to China. It's getting them to go abroad to study at all. But acquiring strong language skills, cultural competency, and a deep understanding of a place and its people's requires such immersion. With luck, when the 2015 harvest moon comes along, more Americans will see it from within China.

***** 

橄榄球Gǎnlǎnqiú（"olive ball" or football）Watch （well, sort of）

The USC Trojans opened their season with wins against the Fresno State Bulldogs and the Stanford Cardinal.With this issue of Talking Points, we use football opponents as a way to talk about U.S.-China linkages past and present.

Fresno State has doubled the number of students it enrolls from China and Hong Kong since 2011. 82 were enrolled in fall 2013. Another four came from Taiwan. Exports from the Fresno area（congressional district 4）slipped a bit from 2011（$112 million）to 2012（$98 million）. The district's top exports included computer parts, waste and scrap, agricultural crops, and machinery. Fresno, though, is best known for its agricultural output. The county ranks as America's top agricultural producer. In the 1980s and 1990s, cotton farmers there and elsewhere in the San Joaquin Valley followed output and prices in China closely, experiencing wide fluctuations in demand from China. Demand for other crops gets more attention these days. Citrus exports should help overall figures a great deal with the lifting of a Chinese ban on California citrus. The ban was imposed in April 2013 after Chinese 

authorities found brown rot, a soil fungus, in some California oranges and lemons. Fresno's neighbor, Tulare County is the California's top citrus producer. Fresno lags California's Kern County in pistachio production, but has also benefited from the state's push of pistachiosales. In 2010, then California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed pistachios（开心果, the smiling nut）at a Hangzhou exhibition. The Fresno-based California AlmondGrowers Association even advertises in the Shanghai subway stations. Until the current drought, almond（杏仁）and pistachio land in Fresno was more valuable（up to $25,000/acre）than citrus or other crop land. Almonds became California's top agricultural export, ahead of dairy and wine, in 2011-12. California supplies about 84% of the world's almonds. Fresno State has 62 acres of mature almond trees. Students and scholars carry out research in those fields and the university sells their output. 

In the 19^th century, Stanford was one of the first universities to enroll Chinese students. And, along with USC, was one of the schools enrolling the first 50 PRC students in America in 1978. In 2012, 11% of Stanford undergrads were from China or Hong Kong. 29% of Stanford's graduate students were from China. Many of these students would like to stay in Silicon Valley and some will be able to do so via the H1B work visa program. About 5% of all such visas in 2013 went to students from China and many were to permit work in Silicon Valley.Silicon Valley, of course, is responsible for much of California's high tech exports and has attracted considerable Chinese investment. Wuxi PharmaTech has a new cell therapy facility and Baidu has a new research and development facility in the area. The Baidu facility is headed by Andrew Ng, a former Stanford professor and Google scientist. The company says it will invest $300 million in the facility. 

California, of course, has not always been a welcoming place for Chinese. In the late 19th century, Guangdong native Walter Fong graduated from Stanford Law. He was prohibited from admission to the California bar, though he set up a legal advice office. In 1897, he and Stanford student Emma Howse, barred from marrying in California, went to Colorado to wed. 

Stanford students, though, have long been interested in China. Today they can study at the university's center on the Beijing University campus. But even in the 19th century alumni headed to China. The most famous of these was Herbert Hoover, who the San Francisco Chronicle heralded as the highest paid mining engineer（with an annual salary of $25,000 a year）. Hoover's hosted alumni gatherings in his Tianjin home（with six others attending）. The home was damaged in fighting between Chinese forces and Russian ones during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. Stanford President David Jordan was in Japan during the unrest. He told the Baltimore Sun, "The national feeling is weak in China, but the feeling for ancient customs - the feeling which we call conscience, bigotry or fanaticism, according to the way it affects us - is exceedingly strong."

Hoover, of course, later lead post-World War I relief and recovery efforts in Europe. He served as president of the U.S. 1929-1933. He established the Hoover Library, now part of Stanford University, in 1919. It houses one of the richest collections of Chinese language materials and has been home to many China specialists. 

*****

The USC U.S.-China Institute hosts and co-hosts interesting events next week. The calendar below gives additional information about these and events and exhibitions across North America. We wish you a terrific holiday and look forward to seeing you. Please join us on Facebook and Twitter, we look forward to hearing from you at uschina@usc.edu.

Best wishes, 

The USC U.S.-China Institute

 -- a program of the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

 china.usc.edu 

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Events 

USC | California | North America | Exhibitions   

USC Events 

09/17/2014：Dan Washburn and Karl Taro Greenfeld on The Forbidden Game：Golf and the Chinese Dream

Wallis Annenberg Hall, ANN 106

University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089

Cost：Free, please RSVP at uschina@usc.edu

Time：7:00PM - 8:30PM

Join award-winning journalists Dan Washburn and Karl Taro Greenfeld for a discussion of Washburn's new book, The Forbidden Game：Golf and the Chinese Dream, which uses the politically taboo topic of golf to paint what critics are calling "an illuminating portrait of modern China."

09/18/2014：Contestation and Adaptation：The Politics of National Identity in China
Wallis Annenberg Hall, ANN 106
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089
Cost：Free, please RSVP at uschina@usc.edu
Time：4:00PM - 5:30PM
Please join the USC U.S.-China Institute for a discussion with Professor Enze Han of the University of London on the way five major ethnic minority groups - Uyghurs, Chinese Koreans, Dai, Mongols, and Tibetans - in China negotiate their national identities with the Chinese nation-state.

09/21/2014：4th Annual A Day with Kung Fu Masters
USC Pacific Asia Museum
46 North Los Robles Avenue, Pasadena, California 91101
Cost：Free for members, $25 for nonmembers
Time：2:00PM
The Joy of Kung Fu and USC Pacific Asia Museum present a panel discussion and demonstrations with Kung Fu masters.