Since 1979, thousands of Westerners have been entering China. These include numbers of foreign teachers who have been invited by the Chinese to observe and participate in the educational system. Why were they invited? And just what did the foreign teachers expect to contribute? In this book, Edgar A. Porter addresses and explores these and other questions. This work contains the first English translation of an internal Chinese document outlining how the Chinese should interact with foreign teachers and other experts, both professionally and personally. Although the events surrounding June 4, 1989 have brought many more issues to light, this book seeks to assess the ten-year period of East-West relationships, beginning in 1979, and to test Spence’s argument in his book To Change China that the Chinese invite foreigners only for their technical expertise and that foreigners enter China primarily to change it into their own image. Foreign Teachers in China sums up both the Chinese and foreign perceptions regarding the role of foreign teachers in China’s colleges and universities during 1979 (post-Mao years) and up until the events in Beijing in June 1989. Divided into three sections, the first presents the history of the role of foreigners in China’s institutions of higher learning. The second section is drawn from interviews conducted during 1987-1989. It is here that the role, the motivation and the future of the modern involvement between the Chinese and foreign teachers is placed next to the history outlined in the first section of the book. And the third section presents supporting documents, agreements between various US and Chinese programmes, as well as an internal document from China describing how Chinese should relate to foreign teachers and other experts. Students of Chinese culture and society - from history to foreign policy to Chinese modernization - will find this book of interest.
