Scroll through to explore Yale and China's long history. The timeline is divided into 6 categories: Overview of Yale-China Collaborations; Chinese Students at Yale; The Study of China at Yale; Yale Alumni and China; Chinese Art at Yale; and Collaborative Education Programs.
Yale graduate Peter Parker establishes China’s first western-style hospital, the Ophthalmic Infirmary, in Guangzhou. Among the Chinese who studied there in the 1880s was Dr. Sun Yat-sen, whose name the hospital now bears.
Yale becomes the first academic institution in the United States to collect Chinese books with the deposit of a set of traditional stitch-bound Five Classics with Selected Comments.
Yung Wing graduates from Yale College, becoming the first person from China to earn a degree from an American university.
After returning to China to serve the Qing government, Yung Wing establishes China’s first modern machine factory – the Shanghai Jiangnan Machine Manufacturing Office. Moreover, with approval from the Qing Court to organize the Chinese Educational Mission, Yung Wing sends 120 young Chinese students over ten years to New England for secondary and higher education. Twenty-two enroll at Yale, the favored destination. Yung Wing was the pioneer of the Chinese study abroad industry, and became known as "the father of China’s foreign exchange students."
The study of China at Yale begins with the appointment to the faculty of Samuel Wells Williams, a former American missionary and diplomat in China.
Yung Wing donates his personal library to Yale, where it forms the nucleus of the East Asia Library, now one of the premier collections in the United States.
Zhan Tianyou, “father of China’s railroads,” graduates from Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School. He had been a student in the Chinese Educational Mission.
The Yale-China Association, dedicated to improving education, health, and cultural understanding, is formed by a group of Yale alumni. By the 1920s, it is very much a joint Sino-American enterprise, with all major leadership positions at its institutions held by Chinese.
Yale College graduate Li Denghui becomes the first Director of Studies at Fudan Public School (now Fudan University). He later serves as the university’s first president (1913-36).
With the arrival of Yale College graduate Edward H. Hume, medical education and care become a major focus for Yale-China, which establishes a medical clinic in Changsha. Over time the clinic grows to comprise the Yali Middle School; the College of Yale-in-China; and the Xiangya Hospital and Schools of Medicine and Nursing.
Yan Fuqin graduates from Yale School of Medicine. He goes on to become head of Xiangya Hospital, founder of Shanghai Medical College of Fudan University, and Minister of Health.
Tang Guo’an, who attended Yale as part of Yung Wing’s Chinese Educational Mission, becomes the first president of Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Yale graduate Henry Killam Murphy designs several major buildings in China, including the Grand Auditorium of Tsinghua University.
Pediatrician Louise Farnam, one of the first two women to graduate from Yale School of Medicine, joins the faculty of Xiangya School of Medicine.
Huang Tzu studies Western music at Yale, where he composes In Memoriam, the first large-scale orchestral work by a Chinese composer. Famous today for his art songs, he serves as dean of studies at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in the 1930s.
Yale establishes a program of Chinese language study and pioneers an intensive method of language instruction. Over the next forty years, Yale faculty will develop two series of innovative Chinese textbooks used throughout the United States for decades.
Professor Yang Zunyi earns a Ph.D. in geology and paleontology at Yale. He goes on to become a pioneer in paleontology and stratigraphy in China, an elected Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the first Chinese recipient of the Wilbur Cross Medal awarded by the Yale Alumni Association in 1994.
Yale College graduate John Hadley Cox, who spent two years teaching English in China, donates a group of vessels from the Changsha region, spanning ca. 500 B.C.E. to 1000 C.E., to the Yale University Art Gallery, which today has particular strengths in Chinese ceramics and painting. The Yale Center for British Art has drawings and watercolors representing the Chinese landscape and people by William Alexander, who served as the draftsman of the British embassy to the Imperial Court of China in 1792-94.
King-lui Wu begins a 43-year teaching career at the Yale School of Architecture. Two years later, his first major commission is the design of 37 buildings for the Yali Middle School and Changsha Medical Center.
Yale-China partners with Ch’ien Mu and other Chinese intellectuals to establish New Asia College in Hong Kong, which later becomes part of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
The Council on East Asian Studies is founded to promote education about East Asia at Yale. Today, academic departments regularly offer an array of courses on Chinese language, history, literature, environment, anthropology, sociology, politics, art, and economics.
The Yale Divinity School Library acquires a unique collection of manuscript and archival materials related to missionary work and the Christian church in China. Records of nearly 400 former China missionaries are represented, primarily from the years 1832 to 1950.
Ming Cho Lee joins the faculty of the Yale School of Drama, where he is a professor in the Design Department.
Yale College graduate and future U.S. President George H. W. Bush is appointed U.S. Liaison to China, effectively becoming the first permanent U.S. ambassador to the People’s Republic of China. Other Yale alumni who have served as U.S. Ambassador to China are Winston Lord, James R. Lilley, Clark T. Randt, Jr., and Gary Locke.
The Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Yale, the University’s largest international affiliation group, is founded to promote social, intellectual, and cultural activities on campus.
The Yale Club of Hong Kong, one of the most active Yale alumni clubs in the world, is founded. In the 2000s, Yale Clubs will be formed in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.
More than 150 Yale graduates have participated in Yale-China’s English teaching program in China. And its medical program brings almost 50 Chinese medical personnel to the United States and sends more than 40 Americans to China for exchanges of medical knowledge.
Yale Law School, which has one of the most comprehensive international and comparative law programs in the United States, introduces a course on the emerging role of law in China, with lectures by two scholars from Wuhan University. In the past five years, courses related to China have been offered by Yale’s other professional schools as well, including Forestry & Environmental Studies, Management, Public Health, Nursing, Architecture, and Divinity.
Yale historian Jonathan Spence publishes The Search for Modern China, his magnum opus in a five-decade career spent studying and writing about China. Currently, Yale faculty members are engaged in projects in more than 20 cities in China.
Yale-China expands its programs and partners, with new initiatives in environmental protection, nursing, public health, the arts, legal education, and service.
Yale University Press and China International Publishing Group launch the major series “The Culture and Civilization of China.” More than 150 scholars worldwide collaborate on its nine publications. In 1997, President Jiang Zemin presents the inaugural volume, Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting, to U.S. President and Yale Law School graduate Bill Clinton as his State Gift.
The Richard U. Light Fellowship program is established, providing full funding for Yale students of exceptional promise to study Chinese, Japanese, or Korean at specifically approved sites. To date, more than 1500 students have studied Chinese at universities in Beijing, Harbin, Kunming, Shanghai, Nanjing and Taipei.
The Chia Fellowship at Yale program, launched by the Yale-China Association, brings midcareer nursing professionals to Yale for a six-month residency program, during which they develop public health projects that they implement upon their return to China.
The China Law Center is established by Yale Law School. Later renamed the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School, it undertakes teaching, research, and concrete projects with Chinese partners to help advance legal and policy reforms in China and to advance U.S.-China relations more generally. With offices at Peking University, Yale Center Beijing, and Yale, the center provides expertise to assist in the drafting of Chinese laws and regulations and their implementation, and carries out dialogues and exchanges addressing wide-ranging issues of U.S.-China relations.
Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History is the only venue in the Northeast United States for the groundbreaking exhibition China’s Feathered Dinosaurs, featuring rare fossil specimens of 120-million-year-old “feathered” animals discovered in Liaoning Province, China. The Peabody’s own collections include, at the entrance to the museum, a magnificent specimen of the dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), which was known only from the fossil record until living examples were rediscovered in 1943 in a remote valley in central China.
The Yale School of Architecture China Studio is founded. Now in collaboration with Tsinghua University School of Architecture, it annually involves students from both schools in the study of urban development sites in China, with a particular emphasis on models of sustainable mixed-use and neighborhood development.
Yale announces that it will extend need-blind admissions to all international students in Yale College. By 2013-14, the average award to Chinese undergraduates on financial aid was $48,000 annually.
The Peking-Yale Joint Center for Plant Molecular Genetics and Agro-Biotechnology opens at Peking University. It supports research in the field of basic biology in plant systems and applies this research to crop improvement.
Yale celebrates its 300th anniversary in China with events in Hong Kong, Changsha, and Beijing, where President Jiang Zemin salutes the University.
Former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Trade Representative Carla A. Hills, a graduate of Yale Law School, is appointed chair of the National Committee on United States-China Relations.
The Fudan-Yale Biomedical Research Center opens in Shanghai. The first research from China to be featured on the cover of Cell is from the lab. In the past decade, 5,000 mammalian new mutants/genes have been generated by the joint lab, more than the world research community produced in the preceding four decades. In 2014 the center is designated a National Center for International Research by the Chinese government.
The Yale School of Medicine is one of 16 founding members of the Consortium for the Globalization of Chinese Medicine, established to advance the field of Chinese herbal medicine worldwide. Among the other founding members are Peking and Tsinghua universities; the University of Hong Kong; and the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences (Chinese Academy of Sciences).
Yale School of Art graduate Min Wang returns to China after more than twenty years in Europe and the United States to assume the deanship of the School of Design at China Central Academy of Fine Arts and to serve as design director for the Beijing Olympics.
The Bulldogs International Internship Program is established in Hong Kong and Beijing. In its first decade, more than 315 Yale students pursue summer internships at organizations ranging from the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City to IBM China and Intel.
The History departments at Peking University and Yale launch a formal exchange program for Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows. Students attend graduate courses related to their studies and work on their dissertations with faculty in their discipline. The participants from Peking generally work in non-Asian fields, and those from Yale work on topics in Chinese history.
In collaboration with China’s Ministry of Education, Yale hosts the first Advanced University Leadership Program for presidents of China’s top universities.
Tsinghua University, the China Association of Mayors, and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies initiate a series of executive education programs to help Chinese municipal leaders understand and meet the challenges of sustainable development.
Peking University and Yale launch the Peking-Yale Joint Center for Microelectronics and Nanotechnology, focused on the synthesis, manipulation, measurement, analysis, and modeling of electronic materials and devices on a molecular scale.
Each summer, undergraduate students from Fudan, Tsinghua, Peking, Renmin, and Shanghai Jiao Tong universities attend Yale Summer Session and the English Language Institute. These programs enable participating students to experience life at Yale and take classes with Yale students.
Yale graduates from China increasingly return home to engage in business ventures (e.g., Alibaba, Hillhouse Capital, Sequoia Capital China) or pursue other opportunities in academia, government (e.g., Supreme People’s Court), and civil society.
The China-Yale Senior Government Leadership Program is launched. This program for vice-minister-level officials in the Chinese government focuses on the rule of law and is attended by the most senior cohort of Chinese government officials to participate in executive advancement programs outside of China.
Yale is issued a Qualified Foreign Investor license and becomes the first foreign university to gain permission to invest in Chinese stocks and bonds.
The China Scholarship Council and Yale create the China Scholarship Council-Yale World Scholars Program in Biomedicine, which allows the best Chinese graduate students in the biomedical sciences to study in Yale’s renowned Biological and Biomedical Sciences program.
For six years, Yale and Peking University collaborate on a full-immersion undergraduate exchange program, the first one in China to allow undergraduates from a foreign university to live with Chinese students rather than in an international dorm.
President Hu Jintao visits Yale on one of only three stops during his historic trip to the United States, giving the first speech by a Chinese head-of-state ever to be broadcast live in China. During his visit, President Hu extends a personal invitation for a select group of 100 Yale students and faculty to visit China.
Yale online courses are hailed as among the most popular in China. Philosophy professor Shelly Kagan’s course attracts millions of viewers, making him one of the most famous foreign teachers in China by 2010. A full roster of free courses, including Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller’s “Financial Markets,” which has been viewed 170 million times in China as of December 2016, is available at oyc.yale.edu.
Yale School of Medicine, Yale-China, and Xiangya School of Medicine and its affiliates partner to create one of six model residency programs in China.
The Yale School of Music and Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music host ten of the world’s most prestigious conservatories for a “Musicathlon” during the two-week run up to the Olympic Games.
The Yale School of Public Health launches training programs for Chinese officials with the China State Food and Drug Administration.
The Yale School of Management’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute hosts the first CEO Summit in China. Dean Edward Snyder of the School of Management is expanding the school’s programs for Chinese government officials, entrepreneurs, and business leaders, and facilitating discussion with top leaders from U.S. enterprises, academia, and government.
YaleGlobal, a premier online magazine covering contemporary global affairs, partners with Fudan University to publish YaleGlobal Fudan Edition, the world’s first Chinese-language international online magazine on globalization.
The Yale School of Nursing partners with the Central South University School of Nursing in Changsha, the Hunan Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Yale-China Association on a study intended to contribute to the successful treatment of HIV.
Yale Divinity School establishes a student exchange program with the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Divinity School of Chung Chi College, one of the earliest Chinese institutions dedicated to religious education and theological training.
Addressing an audience at Yale, Chinese State Councilor (now Vice Premier) Liu Yandong urges Yale students to travel to China and calls for the strengthening of bilateral exchanges in the humanities.
The four-year "10,000 Women: Yale-Tsinghua Certificate Program in International Healthcare Management" is inaugurated by the Yale School of Public Health and Tsinghua University to provide leadership training for female healthcare professionals in China.
Yale School of Management professor Chen Zhiwu is named one of the "Ten Public Intellectuals Influencing China." Followers on his Weibo site total more than 10 million.
President Barack Obama establishes the 100,000 Strong initiative, which calls for 100,000 Americans to study in China by the end of 2014. The Yale-China Association sits on the federal advisory committee and is named a signature partner.
Then Yale President Richard C. Levin publishes “Top of the Class: The Rise of Asia’s Universities” in Foreign Affairs.
The China-Yale Women’s Leadership Development Program is launched in cooperation with the All-China Women’s Federation. In the program’s second year, participants are welcomed to the United States by Yale Law School graduate and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The Yale-China Program on Child Development begins a portfolio of projects aimed at improving the quality of early education programs in China and the United States through a network of laboratory kindergartens and key partnerships with government, universities, and public media in China, as well as corporate partners in early care and education in the United States and China.
The Yale Visiting International Students Program is created, bringing top students from such partner institutions as the University of Hong Kong to the Yale campus for a full academic year.
The Yale Alumni Service Corps brings 200 alumni, family, and friends to Xiuning, Anhui Province, for a week of teaching, learning and cultural exchange.
Yale alumni launch the Yale Global Alumni Leadership Exchange to share best practices on alumni relations among universities and organize leadership conferences in Hong Kong and Beijing.
The Yale School of Management convenes the Global Network for Advanced Management, a network of 27 leading international business schools that work together to improve teaching and understanding of the challenges posed by increasingly interconnected and complex global markets. Among the participants are Fudan University School of Management, Renmin University of China School of Business, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Business School.
Henry A. Kissinger donates his papers to Yale University. Diplomat, scholar, and teacher, Kissinger served as U.S. Secretary of State during the Nixon administration, which led to the formalization of relations with the People’s Republic of China.
The Shanghai Theatre Academy launches an annual Winter Institute, co-sponsored by the Yale School of Drama and three additional American universities.
Yale University Press and China International Publishing Group launch Encounters, an innovative and interactive Chinese-language instructional program for English speakers.
The All-China Youth Federation expands its partnership with Yale, annually sending delegations of rising stars for executive education programs on the Yale campus.
The Yale Center Beijing opens, providing a dedicated facility for Yale’s schools and programs to hold workshops, conferences, and leadership programs in Beijing. More than 150 Yale faculty members are currently pursuing a broad array of research, educational, and training activities in, and related to, China – with projects in more than 20 cities involving scores of Chinese institutions.
Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Yale establish the SJTU-Yale Joint Center for Biostatistics, focusing on cancer as well as cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, with special emphasis on translating “bench” research into "bedside" practice.
The Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies announces a dual master’s degree with Tsinghua University’s School of Environment.
