ABSTRACT
After the hiatus of the Cultural Revolution, educational exchanges with the West began again in 1972-73, with England, Australia, France, Italy, New Zealand, Canada, and other countries that had established diplomatic relations and cultural exchanges. During this time, the numbers were extremely small, and there were few if any "defections." 1 The pace of exchanges increased dramatically in the late 1970s, particularly after the 1978 Sino-American Understanding on Educational Exchanges (October 1978) and the 1979 Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology (January 1979). Until the mid-1980s, most educational exchanges were controlled by the Ministry of Education (later renamed the State Education Commission; hereafter SEDC), and the vast majority of sojourners who went abroad as visiting scholars were key researchers in many of China's top research institutes. These "key elements" (gu gan) returned on time, usually after one or two years, and took up major positions in their home institutions. Based on interviews in China, Chen and Zweig found that many of them had never even considered staying abroad. 2
