Johns Hopkins Center for China Studies Announced-10 Million Dollar Donation

The donation came from the a Chinese American individual who plans to build a hybrid auto plant in the US and the hopes are here to open doors for collaboration. As you can read through below the Peking Union Medical College was modeled after Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. BD

A Chinese-American entrepreneur whose company recently unveiled plans to build a hybrid auto plant in Alabama has made a $10 million gift to The Johns Hopkins University to promote innovative new approaches to the study of China.

The gift from Benjamin Yeung and his wife, Rhea, will establish the Benjamin and Rhea Yeung Center for Collaborative China Studies.

The center’s role is to deepen the understanding between the United States and China through a unique collaboration among the various Johns Hopkins schools and academic programs. In the near term, Johns Hopkins envisions new academic and research initiatives funded through Yeung Center grants for collaborative projects across the institution; the proposal process is expected to begin next month. The Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies, run jointly in China by Johns Hopkins and Nanjing University, will be a natural host for some of this activity.

China’s most prestigious medical school, Peking Union Medical College, and its affiliated hospital were modeled on the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine when it was founded in the early 20th century, and the first dean of the Johns Hopkins medical school, William Welch, made trips to China to help establish the school. His partner in this endeavor was Anna Wolf, who led the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.

Yeung (pronounced “young”) is a pioneering automotive industrialist who founded the first Chinese company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and who introduced the Zhonghua sedan, widely considered the first truly Chinese car. In 2002, Yeung and his family immigrated to the United States. As chairman of the automotive start-up Hybrid Kinetic Motors, Yeung announced plans to build a $1.5 billion hybrid car manufacturing facility in Baldwin County, Ala., with the intent to begin production in 2013. Benjamin and Rhea’s son, Jack Yeung, earned his undergraduate degree from the university’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences in 2005 and a certificate of graduate studies from the SAIS center in Bologna, Italy, in 2006.

The creation of the Yeung Center will provide Johns Hopkins faculty and students with the opportunity to develop new programs and initiatives, enhance multidisciplinary scholarship and nurture collaboration between research institutions in China and the United States.