The China-Canada Student Exchange

LATE IN NOVEMBER 1973, twenty Canadian students (ten women, ten men) arrived in Peking to take up their studies under the terms of a China-Canada student exchange. The students had been recruited during the previous summer, but their arrival in Peking had been delayed nearly three months at the request of the Education and Science Group Under the State Council (ESGUSC) of the People's Republic of China. The delay had meant hardship for some, but despite that, and the bleakness of the November Peking landscape, they all entered upon their new experience with optimism (some of it guarded) and enthusiasm. The arrangement under which they came was the result of nearly a year's negotiation. Prior to Canada's recognition of China, Canadian educational institutions, notably the universities of Toronto and McGill, had been anxious to establish a student exchange. These hopes were articulated at an official level during the visit to China in August 1972 of Mitchell Sharp, Secretary of State for External Affairs. The communique issued at the close of his talks with Premier Chou En-lai and Foreign Minister Chih Peng-fei stated the intention of both sides to exchange students. In the months following the Sharp visit, Canadian officials pursued the question but received little positive assurance. It appears that at this time the Chinese were still reviewing the whole question of the revival of extensive foreign student exchanges. At first they talked in terms of an exchange of perhaps three students with Canada, so it came as a surprise to the Canadian side when, late in the spring of 1973, the Chinese proposed that an exchange of twenty students each

China · Political science · Canadian Identity and History · Law