Institutions of Higher Education as Public Diplomacy Tools

Two flagship Chinese universities are home to newly established English-language graduate programs intended to arm international cohorts of future leaders with the skills, knowledge, and insights necessary to thrive in a world in which China will play a leading role. Employing the literature of international education and public diplomacy, this study considers the two new programs—Schwarzman Scholars at Tsinghua University and Yenching Academy at Peking University—presenting them as international educational exchanges with all the public diplomacy connotations that term implies. Although Confucius Institutes typically dominate discussion of China’s public diplomacy efforts in educational milieu overseas, the nearly simultaneous emergence of the Schwarzman and Yenching programs offers an opportunity to consider the role of institutions of higher education, this time within China, as part of that country’s ongoing soft power promotion efforts.