Last Thursday, Harvard moved one step closer to the land of the Forbidden City, as the University announced the launch of the Harvard China Fund (HCF) spearheaded by Geisinger Professor of History William C. Kirby.

The fund will coordinate and support activities related to and in China, as well as ensure that Harvard maintains a leading role in the study of China, Kirby said in a press release.

“Harvard already has significant strengths in the study of China in Cambridge—in our departments and schools as well as in our centers, such as the Fairbank and Asia centers,” Kirby wrote in an e-mail from Shanghai yesterday. “We should like to build on these as we build strengths in other areas across the University.”

“Not only does China have the world’s fastest growing economy, it has, by far, the fastest expanding system of higher education,” he added.

Harvard has long recognized China’s importance as a country, Vice Provost for International Affairs Jorge I. Dominguez wrote in an e-mail yesterday. “Among the founding courses of the post-World War II ‘new’ general education curriculum were the two semesters on East Asian history and civilization.”

The proliferation of students from China, particularly at the graduate and professional schools, has caused those schools to develop substantial China-related activities, he added.

According to Harvard School of Public Health Dean Barry R. Bloom, who sits on the HCF’s steering committee, the fund should support research across all schools that will seek to understand and influence the socio-economic development of China.

Bloom added that the steering committee would serve in an advisory capacity. “Support for projects should be based on the best and most creative ideas of the faculty,” he wrote. “[The fund] should stimulate and foster a competition of ideas that are focused on China.”

Dominguez emphasized that the HCF’s purpose was “not to supplant but to supplement and expand the work [on China] that is already under way.”

“It will not hire professors, admit students, or grant degrees, but it will help to support professors and students at Harvard who work on China,” he wrote.

And as for undergraduates, the HCF will help make it possible for numerous students to study, research, and participate in internships every year in China.

“Many undergraduates already go to China every year,” Dominguez said. “[The fund] will facilitate having more do so.”

—Staff writer Yifei Chen can be reached at chen13@fas.harvard.edu.