Abstract

This article focuses on how young Chinese students, sent overseas to study mainly science and technology by the late Qing Dynasty government with intentions to save feudal China, turned out to be pathways to new republican China. These youths studying in England, France, and the United States later became political, social, and cultural leaders playing crucial roles in shaping China’s future. The students not only learned technical knowledge, but also became aware of their mission to save, strengthen, and modernize their country, and to disseminate and develop what they learned overseas to future generations of Chinese youths. When these students returned to China, they rose quickly up the echelons because of their elitist foreign education. Some of them became famous educators, professionals, politicians, diplomats, and scientists who occupied top positions in China politically and culturally. The whole experience of studying abroad affected how they envisioned modern China and its position in the world.