Following the resumption of diplomatic relations in 1896 between the Empire of Japan and Qing dynasty China following the First Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese government began a series of military reforms to create a modern army along western-lines.
The Pan-Asian faction within the Japanese government actively assisted in this effort, in hopes of forming an Asian alliance against the Empire of Russia and other European powers, as well as to place Japan in a favorable position to influence the direction of Chinese military reforms and domestic political policy.
[1] The creation of the school was initially strongly opposed by Army leader General Yamagata Aritomo, who argued against the wisdom in training a recent, a possibly future enemy, but his objections were overruled by Fukushima.
[1] The program was initially hailed by Yuan Shikai as essential to the modernization and training of the Chinese military, especially after Japan's victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War, and given the much greater economic burden that sending so many students to European schools would have entailed.
When an overall decline in Sino-Japanese relations following the Japanese occupation of Shandong Province during World War I led to increasing anti-Japanese sentiments in China, the numbers of Chinese students in Japan began to drop precipitously.