Stanford University has announced the establishment of a new center at Peking University, which will serve as a base for research, teaching, meetings and conferences. One of the first of its kind created by a university on a Chinese campus, SCPKU represents a visionary commitment by Stanford leaders and a group of alumni, parents and friends of the university worldwide. Stanford's location on the Pacific Rim provides an advantage in fostering U.S. China relations and the new center will establish a strategic hub for Stanford's interdisciplinary work on a host of global issues.

SCPKU is an exciting project on many levels. It's a dynamic platform that will facilitate the entry of all seven schools at Stanford into the heart of the contemporary Chinese scene
-Coit Blacker

One of the major donors to the center is Chien Lee,'75, MS'75, MBA'79, an FSI Advisory Board member and Hong-Kong based private investor whose family's foundation is the lead donor to the center.  For Lee, the collaboration between Stanford and the prestigious Peking University is central. "It will be a good partnership," he says. "When you get great people together you can really achieve something."

The SCPKU building will be named for Lee's father, the late Lee Jung Sen, who attended Peking University when it was Yenching University.  Lee's mother Leatrice Lowe Lee was a member of the Stanford class of 1945.

Stanford's relationship with China stretches back to the late 1970's when the university began accepting Chinese graduate students. Students from China have accounted for the largest number of Stanford foreign graduate student enrollment for the past decade.

The project owes much to the gifted leadership and dedication of Jean C. Oi, Andrew G. Walder, and Coit D. Blacker who envisioned a way to bolster Stanford research, training, teaching, and outreach activities in China.  Oi is the William Haas Professor in Chinese Politics, Director of the Stanford China Program, and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute.  Walder is the Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor of Sociology, a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, and the Fisher Family Director of the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences.  Blacker is the Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute and the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor in International Studies.

As Oi notes, "Stanford has had a strong collaboration with PKU for nearly a decade." The Bing Overseas Studies Program is well established at PKU and hosts roughly 70 Stanford undergraduates on the campus annually. "This project is a natural extension of that relationship," she says.

For Blacker, "SCPKU is an exciting project on many levels. It's a dynamic platform that will facilitate the entry of all seven schools at Stanford into the heart of the contemporary Chinese scene." As he notes, "the new facility will give faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates unprecedented access to their Chinese counterparts at a key moment in the development of relations between our two countries."

The traditional Chinese building will surround a courtyard. Beneath the ground floor, a   state of the art facility two stories deep will feature attractive classrooms, offices, and conference spaces with all modern amenities. The new facility will be administered by the Freeman Spogli Institute.

SCPKU will provide a base of operations for field research, coursework, language study, and internships, allowing faculty and students from across the university to study the region, its peoples and cultures, and issues as they play out on the global scene.

The center will also serve students and faculty whose interests fall outside the traditional definition of "China studies."  Scholars will pursue such topics as energy and energy use, education and educational reform, the rural/urban interface, and problems associated with aging populations. As Blacker points out, "China is a great laboratory for scholars and students working on a wide range of issues."

Gi-Wook Shin, the Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center emphasizes how important it is to have an in country venue to engage Chinese scholars. "It's more convenient for Asians to come to a place in China than to come to California for a conference or seminar that we host," he says. "It's important for Stanford to have a strong presence in China so we can engage Asian people on Asian issues."

The center will be completed in late 2011, with a formal opening planned for 2012.