Boxer Indemnity Scholarship

The Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program was a scholarship program for Chinese students to be educated in the United States, funded by the Boxer Indemnities. On May 25, 1908, the U.S. Congress Senate and House of Representatives passed the Joint Resolution (S. R. 23) to return to China the excess of Boxer Indemnity, amounting to over $11.9 million ($426.4 million in 2025). Despite fierce controversies over returning the excess payment, President Theodore Roosevelt's administration decided to establish the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program to educate Chinese students in the United States. President Roosevelt recognized this program as a chance for "American-directed reform in China" that could improve United States–China relations and raise America's standing in the world. Instead of copying European imperialism and using military means to reap a short-term financial gain, Roosevelt established the program to ensure peace and trade in China in the "most satisfactory and subtle of all ways", while helping the United States gain respect and take a global leadership position.

Since its inception, the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program has been called "the most important scheme for educating Chinese students in America and arguably the most consequential and successful in the entire foreign-study movement of twentieth century China."

On July 16, 1925, President Calvin Coolidge approved "Executive Order 4268—Remission of Further Payments of Installments of the Chinese Indemnity" to implement the Congress's "Joint Resolution to provide for the remission of further payments of the annual installments of the Chinese indemnity" approved on May 21, 1924.

Background

Chinese Educational Mission

Prior to the establishment of the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program, Yung Wing's Chinese Educational Mission also provided some higher education opportunities in the United States for Chinese students. As the first Chinese graduate of Yale University, Yung Wing persuaded the Qing government to send groups of young Chinese students to the United States to study Western science and technology in 1871. Beginning in 1872, with the support of some reform-minded officials of the Qing dynasty, Yung established the Chinese Educational Mission to send 120 Chinese students to study in the New England region of the United States. However, this short-lived effort was disbanded in 1881, a year prior to the Chinese Exclusion Act, and there was little activity afterwards.