When Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman of Blackstone Group, a private-equity firm, announced in Beijing on April 21 the establishment of a $300 million (Rs.1,650 crore) scholarship programme in his name for study in China, it was further testament to the nation’s place as a new centre of gravity in the world. China’s pull on corporate money is already fearsome, and a long list of companies and individuals with substantial business interests in China have lined up to contribute to the programme. Its creation highlights China’s importance to corporate leaders, who are anxious about growing frictions.

Starting in 2016, the Schwarzman Scholars programme will pay for 200 students a year worldwide to attend classes at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, the alma mater of Xi Jinping, the Chinese president. Students will take classes at Schwarzman College, a new building on the Tsinghua campus.

Schwarzman says people know very little about China, and this ignorance is not an option anymore. He says his goal is to reduce tensions by educating the world’s future leaders, who will form an international network to bridge differences between China and the West. He has gathered several luminaries to be advisers on the programme, including Henry Kissinger, Tony Blair, Henry Paulson and Condoleezza Rice.  Schwarzman’s role in the project will raise his own profile in China, though he insists it is a private initiative and has nothing to do with Blackstone.

In ambition and scope, the new programme has drawn comparisons to the Rhodes scholarships, established in 1902 by Cecil Rhodes, an English-born diamond magnate, to bring foreign students to Oxford University. The idea is that in 30 years’ time the president of the United States will have been on a Schwarzman to Tsinghua, instead of a Rhodes to Oxford.

(Excerpted and adapted from The Economist)