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92 Chapter 4 From Central Administration to Party Control  The expansion of U.S.-China educational interactions was shaped not only by the diplomatic relations between the two nations, but also by political and social forces within each country. In China, the development of education as well as educational exchanges with foreign countries was, to an even greater extent, determined by the central government. Although strenuous effort was made by all Chinese regimes in the first half of the twentieth century, only the Nationalist government managed to build an effective central control over education as well as all the study abroad programs. Taking advantage of its control over schools and educational exchanges, the Nationalist government included its party doctrines in qualification examinations required for study abroad, forced students and scholars to join the Nationalist Party (Guomindang) before leaving the country, and imposed close supervision on students and intellectuals in China as well as in the United States. As a result, educational exchanges were turned into an integral part of state as well as partybuilding efforts by the Nationalist Party. If the effective central administration helped keep China’s educational interactions with the United States growing until the Japanese invasion, the Nationalist effort to exert thought control increasingly alienated the Chinese students and scholars. Taking Over Qinghua University Having purged the Communists in mid-1927, Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kaishek ) continued the Northern Expedition with his Nationalist army. With help from the military forces led by Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan, the Nationalist army entered Beijing in June 1928, forcing Zhang Zuolin, a major warlord, to flee back to his home base in Manchuria. When Zhang Xueliang, the young marshal who took over the control of Manchuria after Zhang Zuolin was killed in an explosion engineered by the Japanese army, pledged his allegiance to the Nationalist government in August, China was largely unified under Jiang.1 From Central Administration to Party Control 93 Faced with challenges from dissident politicians and rebellious “new warlords,” as well as threats from the Communists and the Japanese militarists, the Nationalists made great efforts to consolidate their power through the establishment of a modern state apparatus and reforms in China’s finance, education, communication , defense, and light industry. In order to meet the need for highly trained experts and specialists in various fields, further expansion of educational exchanges with foreign countries, especially the United States, became essential to the survival and success of the Nationalist regime. Qinghua, as a unique institution in China’s higher education and international educational exchange, was the prime target for political control and educational reform under the new Nationalist regime. However, its early effort to impose tight control over Qinghua was impeded by infighting among competing government offices. Legally, the University Council (Daxueyuan) had authority over all educational institutions in China, including Qinghua. The Foreign Ministry , claiming its special historical ties, refused to give up its control over the school completely. Unwilling to damage his relations with the Foreign Ministry or interrupt students’ education at Qinghua, Cai Yuanpei, the director of the University Council, agreed to put Qinghua under joint jurisdiction. Recognizing the concession made by Cai, the Foreign Ministry allowed the University Council to play a major role in managing Qinghua.2 Once the agreement was reached, the two offices began to work on the reorganization of Qinghua immediately. By the end of July 1928, the Bylaws of the National Qinghua University (Guoli Qinghua Daxue Tiaoli) were completed, providing a new framework for Qinghua. The Nationalist reform effort at Qinghua was not well received in Washington . Tang Yueliang, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, did contact John MacMurray before the new Bylaws were made public. However, MacMurray refused to give his support because he believed that all the drastic changes were made without consulting the American legation and that the request for his approval was done “apparently as a matter of courtesy.” Unwilling to give up American influence and control over Qinghua so easily, MacMurray tried to press the Chinese government, as he and many of his predecessors had done in the past, to alter its decisions. He deplored the abolition of the old board of directors of Qinghua College and warned that if the proposed changes were implemented by the Nationalist government, he would consider it a “violation of the understanding upon which the American government was giving the money month by month” and reconsider “whether the Board thus set up by the national government...

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