The $300 million scholarship fund for foreign students to study in China launched by US private equity tycoon Stephen Schwarzman represents a "remarkably ambitious" effort to boost understanding of China by the United States and other Western nations, an executive member of the Asia Society said.

"For Americans looking beyond their shores, there is no nation that matters more than China, no relationship that matters more than the US-China relationship, and, frankly, no place where there's a more profound need for greater understanding," Tom Nagorski, the society's executive vice-president, told China Daily.

Schwarzman, founder and chairman of New York-based Blackstone Group LP, announced the scholarship on Sunday at a ceremony in Beijing.

Beginning in 2016, the program will send 200 mainly US students to Beijing's Tsinghua University each year.

Schwarzman, whose net worth has been estimated by Forbes at $6.5 billion, will donate $100 million of his own money to the project and raise an additional $200 million from blue-chip companies that already have signed on as donors.

The project, which organizers called the largest philanthropic effort with foreign money in China's history, will pay for full scholarships, along with a building to house the program at Tsinghua, the alma mater for both President Xi Jinping and former President Hu Jintao.

Schwarzman told the ceremony his aim is to spur greater understanding of China by the US and other Western nations, and to end in particular Americans' "isolated" view of China.

Most Americans, Schwarzman declared, "know next to nothing about China". Xi and US President Barack Obama praised the gift in statements read at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose 1971 China visit opened diplomatic relations, said in a videotaped message he hoped the program would influence future "international discourse and diplomacy".

Nagorski, whose non-profit New York-based Asia Society focuses on educating the world about Asia and has Schwarzman as one of its trustees, wrote in an e-mail that "the Chinese are investing heavily in the education of their people about the rest of the world". Now Schwarzman is making "a major investment in the education of Americans, and others, about China", he wrote.

Schwarzman said China's fast growth and increasing world influence would define the 21st century, as US connections to Europe did for the 20th century.

The Rhodes Scholarship program, created at the turn of the last century to attract international students and potential world leaders to the UK's Oxford University, inspired Schwarzman's project, he said.

The executive said he hoped partnering with Tsinghua would help "build a culture of greater trust and understanding between China, America and the rest of the world," essential conditions for worldwide stability and prosperity.

Scholarship winners will be allowed to take part in a one-year, all-expenses-paid master's program at Tsinghua in public policy, economics and business, international relations or engineering.

The program's advisory board includes former world leaders such as France's Nicolas Sarkozy, Britain's Tony Blair, Canada's Brian Mulroney and Australia's Kevin Rudd. Former US secretaries of state Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice are also on the board, as is cellist Yo-yo Ma.

The program already has $100 million in commitments from sponsors including companies whose China business is important to their global success. The sponsors include Boeing Co, General Electric Co, Caterpillar Inc and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Tom McLean, Boeing's director of international communications, said the Chicago-based plane maker is supporting the program "because it will help develop future leaders with global sensibilities and further strengthen the ties between our two countries."

Blackstone's rising stock prices in the past year have driven up the 66-year-old Schwarzman's net worth by $1.3 billion to $6.5 billion, according to Forbes, which ranks him 63rd among the 400 richest people in the US. At the end of 2012, the firm had $210 billion assets under management.

The donation comes as Blackstone is stepping up its investment in China, particularly in the property market. The firm seeks to raise a $4 billion real-estate fund to focus on China and other Asian countries, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

michaelbarris@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily 04/23/2013 page8)