[
    {
        "id": 212550,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 104,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "84\n\n+27\n\nThe Center was founded on 1 October, 1978 by Professor Chou Wen-chung, a Chinese American composer and Vice Dean of Columbia University's School of the Arts. He believed, as he expressed when the Center began to operate, that \"the coming decade should witness a major thrust in the arts in China, one similar to those we see in science and higher education\" and that the \"partnership between the United States and China... is a natural one that will reap benefits for both countries and contribute to the cultural advancement of the world.\" Specifically, the Center's programme is organized to initiate and facilitate the exchange of specialists, students, materials, performances and exhibitions, special projects and information on both the performing and visual arts. It creates and promotes projects of an ongoing nature rather than sponsoring isolated events.28 Though the Center took on the role of serving as the direct counterpart to the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles in late 1980 at the recommendation of the Chinese Government, its emphasis has been on exchanging specialists between educational institutions. In the first two years of operation, the Center sponsored the visits of three exchange specialists to and three from China. The Center also sponsored two American delegations to China on **observation tours** and one Music and Arts Education Delegation to the United States, which was led by Lin Mohan, Vice Minister of Culture of China. In succeeding years, though other programmes continued, the Center worked actively in promoting exchanges in arts education, such as sponsoring Chinese students going to the United States.\n\nThe Center's financial support was provided primarily by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF). Specific programmes of exchange were funded by grants from foundations, corporations, and individuals. The Center also relied on unrestricted contributions and donations of services and art exchange materials. As the Center reported in November 1981, the RBF had renewed its 1978-1980 grant for two more years and the Ford Foundation had pledged continued financial support for three more years.\" A number of other foundations, corporations, and other organizations, including the Henry Luce Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council and the United Board For Christian Higher Education, have provided financial support and many other institutions and individuals contributed to the Center's work in various ways.\n\nObviously, to discuss the motivations of the individuals and organization in supporting the Center's work is difficult, if not impossible.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212551,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 105,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "85\n\nNonetheless, a large portion of the participants in U.S.-China arts exchanges believe that, since the two countries are major players in international relations, mutual understanding of the other's culture was crucial in making the world a better place to live in. To the people in whose mind this theme loomed large, it was important to have a friendly relationship with China and exchanges in the arts were a handy way to achieve this goal.\n\nThe uniqueness of Chinese culture has also motivated some Americans who saw that exchanges could bring to American culture some diversity and therefore enrich it. The interest of Americans in Chinese culture was obvious, as can be seen by, for instance, the increasing number of Americans travelling to China each year.\n\nFinally, but by no means the least important factor in supporting arts exchanges with China by private sectors, there was a rejuvenation of the affinity which can be traced back to the 19th century \"special relationship\" between the United States and China which existed to the 1940s. To some, the special opportunity for the United States to transfer its culture and products to China on favourable terms re-emerged as a result of the drastically increased contacts between the two countries in the Carter years. \"Recognition of the People's Republic set long suppressed dreams of a return to China swirling in the minds of educators (the legatees of the missionary impulse) and businessmen.\" This helps to explain the involvement, rather intensive, of the RBF and the Henry Luce Foundation, which maintained close ties with China in the 1940s, and the United Board For Christian Higher Education, in China's arts education.\n\nAffinity and crisis\n\nThe highpoint of Sino-American arts relations was in 1970-1981. In his visit to the United States in January 1979, Deng Xiaoping personally signed a cultural agreement with President Carter in Washington D.C.. While in the United States, Deng extended to Seiji Ozawa, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, an invitation for the BSO to visit China. When the BSO arrived in Beijing in March 1979, Deng again paid his personal tribute to Sino-American arts exchanges by personally attending its performance and welcoming it as the first American performing art group to visit China since the elevation of relations to ambassadorial level.\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    }
]