Boxer Indemnity Scholarship
[3] Despite fierce controversies over returning the excess payment, President Theodore Roosevelt's administration decided to establish the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program to educate Chinese students in the United States.
President Roosevelt recognized this program as a chance for "American-directed reform in China" that could improve United States–China relations and raise America's standing in the world.
[5] Since its inception, the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program has been called "the most important scheme for educating Chinese students in America and arguably the most consequential and successful in the entire foreign-study movement of twentieth century China.
The uprising, known as the Boxer Rebellion, began as an anti-foreign, anti-imperialist, village-based movement in northern China, in response to fears of westerners seizing Chinese territory, requiring concession, seeking protection in court for their followers, and causing drought and natural disasters.
In the summer of 1900, the Eight-Nation Alliance—comprising Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Britain and the United States—sent troops to relieve the siege of the foreigners and Chinese Christians in the Legation Quarters.
[9]At the same time, Qing representative to the United States Liang Cheng[a] learned that the terms of the Boxer Protocol awarded the U.S. more than it had originally demanded and initiated a campaign to pressure the U.S. into returning the difference to China.
[4] In addition, American missionaries in China, sympathetic to the suffering of the average Chinese family, were clamoring for the return of the excess Boxer Indemnity.
[10] Roosevelt realized that if the United States were to help China and return the excess of the Boxer Indemnity while all the other powers were taking its territory and exploiting its people, "by a very small effort the good-will of the Chinese may be won over in a large and satisfactory way".
During that time, many of the Western-returned students such as Liang Cheng and Tang Shaoyi "formerly pushed to the margins of government and shunned due to their Western influence, were brought into power as the fortunes of reformers improved".
Therefore, he quickly "assented in April 1906 to the wisdom of Smith's proposal" [8] and decided to establish the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program to "turn the current of Chinese students"[5] to America.
Their education in American high schools and colleges, which would take place at a formative period of their lives, would have "a substantial impact on their political, emotional and even physical development".
[17] In light of China's Self-Strengthening Movement during that time, the Qing government urged students to focus their studies on the fields on Science, Engineering, Agriculture, Medicine and Commerce.
U.S's act of justice, friendship, and allowance greatly influenced other Powers: Other governments, recognizing the beneficial effects of America's earlier action in this matter, are proposing to take a similar step.
The British Government announced in December, 1922, that it would release its funds for purposes "mutually beneficial to Great Britain and to China…" [14]The remission of the Boxer Indemnity, as Roosevelt planned, helped the U.S. to not only dispel the embarrassment caused by the boycott, but also build its international image.
