Helping China?

As a community, the foreign experts fitted somewhere between the diplomatic/correspondent communities and the long-term residents. Like Western diplomats and correspondents, they usually spent around two years in China. But they were a much more disparate group, going to the PRC through individual arrangements with the Chinese authorities, not as representatives of Western governments or media organizations—or even on official exchanges like most students. Like the long-termers, they worked in Chinese institutions, a few even in the same department or section, in an environment where foreigners were a tiny minority. They had the same formal conditions, though they were specifically recruited as foreign experts while the long-termers found themselves in this category largely by default. Unlike the long-term residents, though, they were always conscious that they were in China for only a few years.

China · Political science · Public relations · Chinese history and philosophy · Law · Public Administration