Happy Birthday Nanjing
The Hopkins Nanjing Center celebrates its 20th anniversary in style
By Sean McGowan and Jessica Stahl

President of Johns Hopkins University, William Brody, is speaking and there is the distinct possibility I am the only person in the auditorium straining to understand. Standing at the lectern before honored guests, including a former U.S. Secretary of State, the current Governor of Jiangsu Province, and a former U.S. Ambassador to China, President Brody is delivering a speech in flawless Mandarin Chinese. During the past year, possibly feeling unchallenged by the task of managing a world-renowned university, Brody, who already holds advanced degrees in both electrical engineering and medicine, devoted himself to the mastery of Chinese.

The occasion was the 20th anniversary of the Hopkins Nanjing Center (officially titled The Johns Hopkins University – Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies). The Center celebrated with a two-day event that included alumni dinners, the dedication of a new building, musical performances, an official ceremony, and a gala. 

The Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University jointly established the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in 1986. Its mission was “to develop and train professionals to provide leadership in managing successful bilateral and multilateral relationships involving China and the West in an increasingly complex international environment.” This objective is achieved by, among other opportunities, offering coursework on contemporary China in Chinese to non-native speakers and, conversely, offering coursework on issues of the United States in English for Chinese students.

Since opening, the Hopkins-Nanjing Center has educated more than 1,700 Chinese and American graduate students. A major part of this year’s celebration was the dedication of the $19 million Samuel Pollard building, representing the school’s continued expansion of its mission and its ability to fulfill it.

According to Dean Jessica Einhorn, “Nanjing University and Johns Hopkins joined together to engage as equal partners in the establishment of a joint center dedicated to graduate education in US-China relations, and through the worst and the best of times, both great universities maintained that commitment to one another and to open education.”

The culminating event of the anniversary celebration was an afternoon of speeches that began with President Brody and ended in the presentation of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center Award for Outstanding Contributions to Cultural Understanding Between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China to former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. 

President Brody had the crowd at “dajia hao” and subsequent speeches maintained the momentum. Brody was followed by an elaborate and fascinating pas de deux in which subsequent speakers displayed their own mastery of a foreign tongue: the Chinese of English and the Americans of Chinese. Much to the audience’s enjoyment this jovial competition continued until the introduction of the keynote speaker, turning the event into equal parts academic, entertainment and celebration. 

The keynote speaker, Henry A. Kissinger, former US Secretary of State under two presidents, 1973 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and author of much required reading at SAIS, addressed the audience in a grand finale to the day’s speaking agenda. Kissinger is best known for his landmark achievement in paving the way for a reopening of US-Sino relations during the Cold War, and possibly equally well known among SAIS students for his scholarship in writing the seminal work on diplomacy and world history entitled Diplomacy.

Dean Einhorn, who introduced Kissinger, said, “Our students at this great school cannot relive history, they can only learn it from books. And Henry Kissinger the scholar has given generations of students the gift of understanding international relations by truly understanding statecraft.”

Kissinger expressed his gratitude for the chance to speak at the Nanjing Center, and his gratitude to be allowed to do so in English.

“I am very grateful for Jessica speaking in English,” joked Kissinger, “because when the president of Johns Hopkins speaks Chinese and the president of Nanjing University speaks English with less of an accent than I do, it was difficult to get up here – to get the courage to address you.”

Kissinger talked about the importance of Sino-American cooperation both in the past and in today’s world, and how drastically the nature of relations has changed since his first visit to China in the 1970s.

“If somebody had shown me a picture of a typical Chinese city today, filled with automobiles, with highways going around it, with consumer goods, I would not have believed it possible that this could be done in any time period through which I could live,” said Kissinger. “The idea that a day might come when people in the West were worried about Chinese economic competition in industrial and technological production – that was beyond anyone’s imagination.” 

According to Kissinger, the reemergence of China as a world power occurs today in a world in which the strength of the nation-state as an organizing entity is diminishing and China and the US remain as the last great nation-states. These states alone, says Kissinger, have the power to demand sacrifices from their people for a vision of a better future.

“In that sense, it is no accident that the role of China and the United States in bringing about a better and more peaceful world has become even more crucial than it was at the time that relationships were opened,” Kissinger noted.
 
As a result, Kissinger says that there are many areas in which the two countries could work together to contribute to the “peace and progress” of the world. On environmental degradation and nuclear proliferation he predicted mutual and global benefits from greater cooperation, saying that these problems can only be solved cooperatively.

“I’m glad to say that on the issue of the Korean nuclear program, China and the United States have worked together in an extraordinary fashion,” said Kissinger. “And whatever progress has been achieved is to the fact that both countries have analyzed the issues together and been honest with each other and have moved together step by step.”

He cautioned both sides not to push the other too hard in achieving these goals and risk destroying the spirit of cooperation, and offered an admonishment to the United States in its agenda of world reform.
 
“I sometimes point out to my American friends that China has had many dynasties, many of which, individually, have had a longer history than the entire United States, and that therefore we sometimes should moderate our enthusiasm to improve all of mankind, when we remember that the Chinese were here for 3,000 years before the United States was invented,” noted Kissinger.
 
Advising current students and future leaders Kissinger offered a vision of change and the role great leaders can play in creating it.
 
“All great achievements were an idea before they became a reality,” he said. “All great leaders need, above all, courage and character.”

Sean McGowan is a 2nd year MA candidate in China Studies.  Jessica Stahl is a 2nd year MA candidate in Conflict Management and an editor of the Observer.