U.S.-China Student Fellow Selected for Prestigious Schwarzman Scholarship
A Georgetown University U.S.-China Student Fellow and Stanford University senior, Clayton (Clay) Garner, will be among the best and brightest young leaders in this year’s class of Schwarzman Scholars.
Studying at Schwarzman
The intense and immersive one-year program, launched in 2016, allows elite students to examine China’s expanding global role and earn a master’s degree in public policy, international studies, or economics and business at Schwarzman College, housed on the campus of China’s prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing. CEO and co-founder of asset management firm Blackstone Stephen A. Schwarzman established the program to develop the next generation of world leaders through mentorship and stimulate future geopolitical stability and global collaboration.
Garner and 126 other scholars were selected from more than 3,000 applicants, making the fully funded scholarship exceptionally competitive.
Fellows Collaborate on the Hilltop
Before being selected as a Schwarzman Scholar, Garner, an East Asian studies major, was also selected for the inaugural cohort of Georgetown’s U.S.-China Student Fellows Program for the 2016-2017 academic year. The competitive program is part of the Georgetown Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues and serves as a platform for student dialogue and deeper understanding of challenges faced by the global community. Each year a cohort of eight to ten elite scholars from top U.S. and Chinese universities is selected to be a part of the initiative’s fellows program. The students collaborate over the course of one academic year through blogs, networking opportunities, and in-person meetings in both Washington, D.C., and Beijing.
The Georgetown student fellows program, Garner said, provides valuable exposure to a broad range of issues he plans to further examine in his economics and business studies at Schwarzman.
“What’s different about the Georgetown program is that it made me realize the U.S.-China relationship is so much bigger than just security and politics,” he said. “Every issue related to globalization is going to be affected by that relationship.”
Greater Perspectives
For him, it is “eye opening” to learn how other young students understand these international issues. Each person in the student fellows cohort brings with him or her a distinct blend of experiences and perspectives on topics like the refugee crisis and regulation of multinational corporations, he added. Garner, for example, has gleaned a deeper understanding of global issues having experienced the unique cultures of his hometown in Connecticut, his university in California, and later, through his travels, those of China, and D.C.
Seeking out opportunities to learn from and interact with people of different cultures is critical now more than ever. Language is an essential part of that, he said, adding that Georgetown fellows have the opportunity to speak together in both English and Chinese.
“It adds another dimension to conversation and lets you give someone the chance to express themselves in their native language,” the fluent Mandarin speaker said.
Becoming a “C-Pop” Sensation
Receiving the Schwarzman scholarship is just one point on an extensive list of accomplishments related to Garner’s lifelong passion for Asia. Before he was a Schwarzman scholar or Georgetown fellow, he became an overnight pop star when his homemade Mandarin music videos went viral across Chinese social media in 2012. By 2015, he had been named one of the “Top 30 Internet Stars of China” and had co-hosted nearly 30 episodes of Beijingke, a talk show focused on developing youth’s understanding of the nation’s cultural traditions.
Merging Two Passions: Digital News and China
Now, Garner is investigating the relationship between Maoist rhetoric and the Chinese New Left in his honors thesis at Stanford and plans to further study how the digital media industry interacts with China’s party-state system.
Georgetown’s program has urged him to look beyond the surface of what news outlets share about China and the United States and to dig deeper into the beauty of the relationship throughout his future studies, because, he said, “both sides are guilty of painting negative pictures of each other.”
Note: Garner is one of two Georgetown affiliated members to become a Schwarzman Scholar. Jose Luna (SFS’15) was part of the first cohort of Schwarzman Scholars.