Richard Nixon had ping pong diplomacy. LMU has real estate rapprochement.

Whereas the path to Sino-American détente in the 1970s was partly paved by table tennis matches between U.S. and Chinese athletes, LMU’s recent efforts to expand and improve intercultural understanding, cooperation and exchange with like-minded Chinese institutions is symbolized by a two-story house in nearby Playa Vista.

Here, in a home loaned by recently retired engineering professor Tai-Wu Kao, Chinese thinkers come and go as scholars-in-residence, some staying a week, others longer. They meet LMU students and faculty and other Angelenos, see the city, conduct research and participate in public dialogues. Eight scholars have visited, including a philosopher, a director of ethical studies, a social sciences researcher and the editor of a higher education journal.

The Kao House for Chinese Scholars is just one effort in an ongoing strategy to bring more of LMU to China and more of China to LMU. Why now? The answer is likely obvious to anyone who has followed developments in and around the world’s most populous nation during the past decade. As LMU Chief Academic Officer Ernest Rose says, “Obviously, China is a very important country in the world right now for a number of reasons.”

Rose says LMU’s China interest derives, in part, from an overall campus push for more diversity, internationalism and interculturalism; in part, from an increasing appreciation of globalization’s impact on higher education; and in part, from LMU’s Pacific Rim location.

Many of Rose’s colleagues likewise are bullish on the Land of the Dragon. “There is no question about it,” says Robin Wang, associate professor of philosophy and director of LMU’s Asian and Pacific Studies Program. “China plays an important role on the global stage — economically, politically, culturally.”

LMU’s current Chinese partnership focuses on The Beijing Center, a 10-year-old Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities program located on the campus of the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. The center is populated by students from a consortium of 28 Jesuit institutions of higher learning. The school, administered by Loyola University Chicago, stresses language and culture curricula. Rose anticipates that more Chinese affiliations, including with professional schools, could be added within a year.

Those additions will be in part the result of relationships developed during six trips to China (and other Asian countries) during 2007. Various LMU delegations to cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong have included the deans of almost every school and college, faculty from many departments, and top-level administration officials. The visits were exploratory — “part of our overarching goal of internationalizing the campus,” says Rose — and they were aided by the experience and knowledge of Wang, who was on all six trips and played a key role in coordinating them.

Ricci’s Legacy

While in China, the LMU delegations hosted and attended banquets for local counterparts, offered gifts of See’s Candies and toured universities to learn about potential faculty and educational exchanges. LMU visitors made presentations to prospective students and met with China-based alumni. They took in cultural, historical and architectural sites, such as The Great Wall, the Forbidden City and one particularly historic Jesuit cemetery in Beijing.

Those grounds are the resting place of Matteo Ricci, a 16th century Jesuit intellectual and adventurer who was a translator, cartographer, emissary and inspiration. Wang was raised in Xi’an, in central China, and she remembers learning about Ricci as a child. She and Rose were among the LMU visitors who went to Ricci’s grave.

Philip J. Chmielewski, S.J., the Sir Thomas More Chair of Engineering Ethics, confirms Ricci’s importance in China’s history. “When the Chinese constructed the Millennium Monument in the western part of Beijing,” he says, “the walls of the ramp to the top of the immense sundial structure [featured] reliefs of the figures who shaped the march of Chinese history. Only two Westerners are included: Marco Polo and Matteo Ricci.” Chmielewski is spending the 2008–09 academic year serving as a program coordinator and lecturer at The Beijing Center, and he has taken several LMU student groups to visit China.

The Jesuits’ interest in China, however, extends farther back than Ricci. “St. Francis Xavier attempted to go to China,” Rose says. “He didn’t get past Macau, because at that point the Chinese were not letting foreigners into the country.” Ricci, though, was able to assimilate, Rose says. “[He] was invited to join them, and so he became a member of the academic community and was able to set up a church and be a priest in China during that time.”

Father James L. Fredericks, professor of theological studies who specializes in Buddhist-Christian interreligious dialogue, says that the Jesuits, through the work of Ricci and others, have built a legacy of involvement in and respect for China. “There’s a grand tradition of Jesuits acting as mediators between China and the West … and that’s what we need to be doing today.”

Ricci’s relationships and work abetted LMU’s recent missions. “A number of the universities we visited didn’t necessarily know that much about LMU,” says Richard Plumb, dean of the Frank R. Seaver College of Science and Engineering, “but they all knew about Ricci. It was rather amazing. … When we said that LMU was a Jesuit university, they knew what type of school we meant.”

Prospecting for Partners

In China, Plumb took the opportunity to see for himself the “mind-boggling” vastness of the building boom in Beijing and Shanghai and the speed of construction of skyscrapers there. He also visited Hong Kong, where he sized up potential partnerships.

“We’re trying to foster collaborations for our students and faculty with their counterparts at various universities in China,” Plumb says.

Asked why LMU is interested in China, Plumb responds: “China is an economic power to be reckoned with. It’s important for our engineering students to understand how their designs fit in the world marketplace. If we’re going to be designing products for China, we need to understand something about the country and about the culture.”

Chmielewski has observed up close China’s dizzying sprint toward development and its effects. “The Chinese people, and especially the professionals, have a bone-deep knowledge of this singular set of changes,” Chmielewski says. “The Chinese people are not about mere production and construction. They want more — they want a world that is developing and equitable; they want a world where different children can dream different dreams; and they want a world where people are not divided, but united. The Chinese people are working to bring about a world where negative features are acknowledged, reduced and then eliminated. The professionals, including the engineers, are striving to learn year by year, month by month, day by day how to make this world.”

The China Boom

Back at LMU, student interest in learning about China and learning in China is surging. In 2003, 29 undergraduate and graduate students went to China, according to Skylar Lowe, Study Abroad coordinator at LMU. By 2007, that number had grown to 128. Also this year, the School of Education launched a Chinese Bilingual Teacher education program that aims to credential Mandarin/English speakers to teach in California and beyond. Rose says that LMU is one year into a five-year plan to quintuple international undergraduate enrollment. The percentage has risen already from 1 percent to 2 percent, and Csilla Samay, director of International Outreach, recently made her fourth trip to the region to pitch prospective students in China and elsewhere.

Any recruiter would be wise to absorb and share the stories of current students and recent grads who have spent time in China. Consider Dan Sarafinas ’08. He first visited China in 2006 via The Beijing Center, went to Wuhan University a year later thanks to an LMU grant, and now teaches English and studies Mandarin language and philosophy in Changsha, in southcentral China. His job is the result of a connection made with a scholar who stayed at the Kao House. “I see myself as part of the cultural dissemination and exchange that is happening between China and the West,” Sarafinas says.

That exchange is taking place across the Pacific Rim, from West Los Angeles to lands far beyond. The motto “Open Your Mind” has been showing up lately throughout Sarafinas’ new home city. LMU might not have any such banners posted, but clearly when it comes to China, those same words hold true.

Jeremy Rosenberg is a Los Angeles-based writer. His “Admissions 2.0” appeared in Vistas (Fall 2008).

The Beijing Center

The Beijing Center, administered by Loyola University Chicago, was founded in 1998 and is located at the Beijing University of International Business and Economics. Students from more than 25 U.S. Jesuit institutions and 20 other universities have studied there. Originally designed to provide an undergraduate study-abroad experience, The Beijing Center expanded to offer programs for faculty members and administrators, as well as language training, immersion experiences, educational travel opportunities and home-stay programs.

The center’s programs are designed to expose students to China’s culture, languages, history and geography through the curriculum and experiences. Courses are taught in English, and they include business, communications, theology, arts, philosophy and political science. For more information, go to www.thebeijingcenter.org or www.lmu.edu/studyabroad.