In an interview, Zhou (pronounced “Joe”) said a major focus of his trip to this area was to better understand how universities, government agencies and businesses in the Research Triangle collaborate to spur economic growth.

Duke and other Research Triangle institutions have “certainly played a role in transforming knowledge into practice,” the ambassador noted. “That’s what we’re trying to do.”

Commenting on the visits by Zhou and the other Chinese delegations, Duke’s vice provost for international affairs Gilbert Merkx said, “A lot of things are happening that symbolize the growing importance of Duke’s ties to China and Duke’s profile in China.”

Evidence of the growing ties abounds (see sidebar). Duke admits more students and hires more faculty from China than any other foreign country, Merkx noted. Chinese language and exchange programs are growing in popularity and academic collaborations between Duke and Chinese scholars continue to sprout.

“Chinese college education is still laser-narrow focused; it’s technically oriented,” Zong said. “American education is much more liberal arts focused.”

(Brodhead drew a similar conclusion in his essay “The U.S. Edge in Education,” published in the Washington Post after his trip to Asia.)

Zong tapped into the Chinese appetite to connect with Duke when he interviewed Brodhead in advance of his summer trip. A Chinese translation of the interview was published in the widely circulated China Youth Daily newspaper and an English version ran in the online People’s Daily. Zong has since written more stories for Chinese news media about Duke administrators and students.

Another way Zong has connected his home country and his current school is through the DukeChina.org website, which he created last year with fellow physics graduate student Chen Wei. The site, mostly in Chinese, highlights Chinese Duke alumni and professors, presents the university through stories and events, and guides prospective students through the application process. The site gets 300 to 400 visitors per day, according to Feng Li, the current Chinese Student and Scholar Association president and a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering.

Chinese professors are also eager to work with (and for) Duke. The current burst of interest in collaborating with American scholars grows out of China’s decision in the late 1970s to begin opening its economy, said Shi Tianjian, a Duke political science professor who teaches the course “China and the World.”

“China has changed, gradually of course, since 1978, and one of the fevers in China is ‘learn from West.’” said Shi, who has brought together Chinese and Duke professors to design procedures for municipal and provincial elections in China. “So whenever there is something they don't have a clear idea of how to do, like the election, they would try to seek help from the outside world.”
 
Shi has a theory about why many senior professors from China have succeeded in their careers at American universities.

“We are the so-called Cultural Revolution generation and we were sent onto the village; I worked as a farmer for about 10 years,” said Shi, who received his undergraduate degree
from Peking University in 1982 before coming to the U.S. for graduate school. “That experience -- some people may complain about it -- but I myself learned a lot from that experience and your nerve becomes strong and more determined.”

The advantages to scholarly collaboration go both ways.

Professor Zeng Yi organized workshops last spring at Peking University (PKU) for Duke and PKU faculty in medicine and social sciences whose research deals with the health of aging populations. He is planning a similar joint conference for this coming spring at Duke.

“PKU faculty can learn a lot about new research methodology and findings from collaborations with Duke,” said Zeng, who was trained in China, Belgium, the Netherlands and U.S. “Duke faculty can also learn a great deal from collaboration with the Chinese institutions because the Chinese study samples are much larger.

“Family care in the Chinese society is different than in the Western society -- that could be useful information for American society to care for their old people as well,” he said.

Nearly every school at Duke has some program connecting it to China.

The longest running exchange is between Duke Law School and China’s University of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade, which sent graduate Xi-min Shi to Duke in 1982 to pursue a law degree. Paul Carrington, then dean of the law school, reflected on the challenges of initiating this first exchange in an essay “Duke Law in China: A Remembrance.” In it, he wrote, “Getting him out of China was not easy … A call to our alumnus, former President Richard Nixon ’37, did get the attention of the Chinese bureaucracy.”

Today, the law school has ongoing exchanges with a number of Chinese universities and co-sponsors the Asia-America Institute in Translational Law each summer, during which law students from more than a dozen countries take courses at the University of Hong Kong on the legal systems in Asia and the U.S.

“Increasingly American law firms are opening offices in Beijing and Shanghai, in particular,” said Judith Horowitz, associate dean for international studies at the law school. “In their careers, many of our students will end up spending a few days, and sometimes a few years, in Hong Kong or in China.”

Business between the U.S. and China is driving programs at the Fuqua School of Business, which exchanges about a dozen students each year with four Chinese universities. The school has added a language course in beginning Mandarin for business which, to administrators’ surprise, drew 25 students its first year.

“MBA students are extremely selective with their time and the use of their time,” said Bertrand Guillotin, director of the school’s International Center. “For them to take the time to learn Chinese is significant in the sense that it makes you realize how they value China and the importance that China is taking not just in the world economy but in their careers.”

An increasingly interconnected world has shaped the training at Duke’s medical school.

“A lot of what’s driving our international programs is the idea that we are a global society and that if there are problems in one part of the globe, that will affect us,” said Dr. Ralph Corey, a professor of medicine and infectious disease and director of Duke’s Hubert-Yeargan Center for Global Health. “China is a great example where, if you have SARS in China, then you have SARS around the world.”

Corey set up a medical residency exchange 19 years ago with Beijing Hospital. Through it, 32 Duke residents have been trained for a year in Beijing and 14 Chinese residents have come to Durham.

Duke’s Asian/Pacific Studies Institute stands at the center of the university’s study of Chinese culture and history. This summer, the institute was again designated by the Department of Education as one of 18 National Resource Centers for scholarship on East Asia. Its master’s program has grown steadily from its beginning in 1999 to about 14 students today. Its summer program for undergraduate research has sent 30 students to China in four years.

Sucheta Mazumdar, a member of the institute and a professor of Chinese and Asian American history, said the study of China at Duke is marked by expertise in contemporary China as well as research that cuts across academics disciplines.

“We’re really trying to see China connected to the rest of the world,” she said.