Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1921.djvu/802

 750 CHINA

Medical Board of the Rockefeller Foundation which had been established in November, 1914, ' to undertake a systematic work for the improvement of medical conditions in China.' Large grants have been made by the Rocke- feller Foundation to the Shantung Christian University at Tsinanfu, to the Hunan-Yale Medical College at Changsha, and to the Harvard Medical School of China at Shanghai. Cooperating in every way with the Missionary Societies the foundation is designed to render far-reaching service to the extension of western medical science in China. At Tientsin there are a Chinese Pei-yang University and preparatory department with 12 foreign and 7 Chinese professors, an Anglo- Chinese College, an industrial school under Japanese tuition, general medical colleges, and various private and mission chools.

There are numerous Protestant and Catholic mission schools and colleges at Shanghai and other ports, where the English and French languages and lower branches of western science are taught. It is estimated that altogether some 58,000 educational institutions of all grades (military and naval schools included), are to be found in China, with an aggregate enrolment of 1,600,000 students.

The engagement of America to return to China the surplus of her indemnity of 1900, amounting to 1,756,900Z., produced an undertaking from China to spend this amount in preparing and sending students to the United States there to receive their education. More than four hundred students, including thirty women, have already been sent. A special institution, Tsing Hua College, has been established in Peking to train students for this purpose. A modern university for Chinese with British professors has been successfully established in Hongkong, and attracts students from many parts of China. In Japan, on January 1, 1920, there were 1,241 Chinese students receiving support from the Chinese Govern- ment, 168 in Europe, and 175 in the United States. Of other Chinese students there are 190 in the United Kingdom and 1,600 in the United States.

The development of modern education in China is indicated by the following figures : —

Schools

Scholars

1913-14.

109,448

3,643,206

1914-15.

122,286

4,075,338

1915-16.

129,739

4,294,251

1918-19.

134,000

5,500,000

Experiments have been made in universal education. In the capital city of the province of Kirin compulsory education lias been in operation during the last few years, and the same has been successfully maintained especially in T'ai-yuan, the capital of Shansi, the 'Model Province.'

Chinese education received a remarkable fillip by the invention of a pho- netic script system, which was adopted by the Conference for the Standard- ization of Pronunciation held in 1913, and which has since received official recognition. This script lias three functions ; as an instrument to unify the spoken dialects, to help the study of Chinese characters, and to educate the illiterate.

Fifty Chinese newspapers are published in Shanghai, more than 60 in Peking and Tientsin, while every capital city in the interior has several daily journals. The influence wielded by the Press is growing daily. Alto-

f ether there are over 1,000 daily, weekly, or monthly journals in China, ince 1917 intellectual China has been swept by a new "Literary Revolu-