As a student of Chinese history and culture, I feel privileged to have been a part of the founding teams of both Li Po Chun UWC of Hong Kong (LPC) and UWC Changshu China. 

A s a student of Chinese history and culture, I feel privileged to have been a part of the founding teams of both Li Po Chun UWC of Hong Kong (LPC) and UWC Changshu China. Back in 1992, the marketing material we designed for new LPC was entitled the‘Gateway to China,’ and it aimed to promote the College as an unrivalled centre for the study all things Chinese, albeit through the lens of the Hong Kong cultural melting pot. The founding staff were enthralled at the prospect of encouraging future generations of international students to embark upon what we all hoped would be a life-long engagement with China. At the same time we, naturally, looked forward to the logical next step: a sister College opening on the mainland.

No-one could have envisioned back in 1992 that it would take 23 years to finally establish a UWC in China’s heartland. As one Chinese saying has it:‘the journey towards success is a long one and never ending’. With the opening of UWC Changshu, a major stage of that journey has been completed. Many people have contributed to this moment in history, including members of the China National Committee, colleagues from UWC Norway and the founding team in Changshu. Above all, of course, it was the tireless efforts of Mark Wang, Wang Yi and Xiaohang Sumner that made the difference in translating a shared ‘dream’ into a reality. Their collective belief and determination are articulated elsewhere in this book, but will be rightly embedded into the fabric of UWC Changshu’s unique identity.

UWC Changshu finally opens its doors to Chinese and international students in a world that is very different from the early 1990s when LPC was founded, a world where China is the second largest economic power and is set to overtake the USA in the near future (some would say it already has). It is a country that has enabled 500 million people to move out of poverty in recent years and where all the millennium social goals have been met, or are in sight. It is a nation which is leading the way in its commitment to education, where 7 million students graduated from College last year, and which now competes with the USA in the number of academic papers in science and technology published annually. Against this backdrop, the new UWC Changshu is able to offer students an enviable opportunity to study the China phenomenon in an environment enriched by what might be called ‘complementary bi-polarity.’

Here at UWC Changshu, this idea might be expressed by modernity and tradition inextricably entwined in an approach to life symbolized by the concept of Yin and Yang which postulates the inability of one life force to function, or be understood, in the absence of the other. I believe that UWC Changshu will build successfully upon the concepts of complementary bi-polarity to cultivate a school culture shaped by the West within the East; the East within the West; the old within the new; the new within the old. It is my fervent hope that UWC China Changshu students will be imbued with the importance of tradition within modernity and take real inspiration from their participation in a forward-looking community that takes overt pride in the past.

Having worked in three of the United World Colleges, I make no apologies for remaining unashamedly committed to the group’s core philosophy. I am, therefore, optimistic that our students at UWC Changshu will be equipped to make a real difference to the world in which they and their children will live. The founding team at UWC Changshu has worked hard to ensure that prominent amongst the list of skills students will take into adult life will be an invaluable multilingualism and multiculturalism. I am personally hopeful that UWC Changshu will provide its students with a truly defining education and that its graduates will be ideally placed to act, individually and collectively, as a force to unite people and cultures for peace and towards a sustainable future and, within that context, help specifically to remove misunderstandings which diminish relationships between China and the world.