Harvard University was in financial distress as a result of the Great Recession. In 2009, its endowment had fallen by about $10 billion, or nearly 30 percent.
Harvard’s leaders discovered a portion of the solution in China to aid in recovery. As Washington and Beijing promoted an engagement strategy, if cautiously at times, as the most effective means of fostering bilateral relations, American business was already flooding in.
Harvard had everything wealthy and well-connected Chinese desired: status and access to powerful networks for themselves and their children. China promised vast academic and commercial prospects.
Harvard received the largest grants and contracts from China and Hong Kong of any American university between 2010 and 2025, totaling $560 million. These came primarily from private foundations and philanthropists, with a smaller portion coming via agreements with government organizations such as universities.
Almost giddy in its description of the optimism in Sino-American relations at the time, Harvard Magazine, a newspaper linked with the institution, said that “the confluence of new, enormous property wealth and especially favorable relationships with China’s leadership and scholars have happily converged.”
Harvard is now facing the consequences of its relations with China. These relationships were established when Harvard was more financially precarious and when a large portion of the foreign policy establishment thought that universities might help spread American democratic values throughout China and the rest of the world.
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