Welcome to Harvard University China Connections!
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Harvard University’s entry into the China field began over 125 years ago, in 1879, when Harvard hired its first Chinese teacher, Mr. Ko Kun-hua, who reached Cambridge from Ningbo after nearly nine months of travel with his wife and six small children. While Mr. Ko unfortunately died within months of his arrival, the collection of books bought for him to use in his classes were the first Chinese materials acquired by the Harvard College Library. These were later among the initial holdings of what became the Harvard-Yenching Library, which now, with approximately 1,120,00 volumes, is the largest university East Asian research collection outside of Asia.

That early attempt to introduce Chinese into the curriculum set in motion what has become a comprehensive program of the study of China at all instructional levels within the Faculty of Arts and Science. Harvard now offers language instruction in Mandarin, Cantonese, Southern Min (Taiwanese), Uighur, Manchu, Mongolian, and Tibetan, with over 600 students enrolled in these courses each year. More than 370 different academic courses across the university relate to some aspect of East Asian studies ranging from history and literature to archaeology, government, and plant biology. In addition, nearly every school at Harvard is involved in China-related research or training. The university is also fortunate to be home to two libraries with extraordinary collections of Chinese materials, the Harvard-Yenching Library, noted above, and the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research Library (now part of the Fung Library), with its unique collections of post-1949 materials from China. The University also houses important collections of Asia and China-related photographs at the Arnold Arboretum Archives, the Peabody Museum, and the Harvard-Yenching Library.

In addition, a number of research centers and programs focus exclusively or in part on Chinese studies and contemporary issues. Among these are the Harvard Yenching Institute, the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, the Asia Center, the Asia Programs at the Center for Business and Government at the Kennedy School of Government, and the newly established Harvard China Fund.

The Harvard-Yenching Institute, which brings about 30 scholars from China to Harvard every year, was established in 1928 to promote of higher education in Asia with funding from the estate of the late Charles Martin Hall, founder of the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). Through the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard had close ties with Yenching University (now the site of Peking University). Until 1950 the Institute maintained an office on the campus of Yenching University.

Harvard’s involvement in the study of modern China began in the 1950s, at the height of the Cold war, when John King Fairbank (Fei Zhenqing), who is credited with developing the field of modern Chinese studies in the United States, established the Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS). He joined the Harvard faculty in 1936 and served as director of the U.S. Information Service in Chongqing during World War II. CEAS, set up in 1957, was renamed the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research in 1977 upon Professor Fairbank’s retirement from Harvard.

For the past six years, the China Policy Program at the Kennedy School has run advanced training programs for Chinese officials to enhance their capacity to manage domestic and international policy issues in a rapidly changing public environment and to promote communication and research about key developments in China and US-China relations. The Harvard China Fund, founded in 2006, was established to support interdisciplinary research and teaching about and in China, to focus Harvard's strengths towards addressing challenges that face China, and to improve communication and collaboration with Chinese scholars and institutions.

Throughout the University, faculty members are working on numerous research projects, often in partnership with their Chinese colleagues, on a vast range of topics. Every year increasing numbers of undergraduate and graduate students travel to mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan for language study, research, and to take part in internships in business, labs, and other professions and to teach. Such students often form a lifelong interest in China and develop long-lasting relations with the people and institutions that they came to know while abroad.

Harvard’s contacts with China through the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the professional schools continue to expand, as does Harvard’s impact in the region. The University now has over 1,200 students and scholars from China, HK, and Taiwan. Moreover, there are thousands of Harvard alumni now living in mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, who represent the college and probably every professional school at the university. Some left Harvard only months ago, others more than seventy years ago, but each has added in some way to the ongoing ties between Harvard and China. Many of these alumni maintain close ties with the University and contribute to the flourishing Harvard Clubs in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taipei. Hundreds of other Chinese scholars and government officials have come to Harvard to take part in advanced training courses or as visiting scholars.