The world watches China’s rise with feelings ranging from awe and respect to fear. Too often, however, these emotions are unmediated by understanding. Stephen Schwarzman’s lavish gift to Tsinghua University, which will create scholarships for foreign and Chinese postgraduate students to study together for a year in Beijing, is designed to fill that deficit.

Mr Schwarzman, founder of private equity group Blackstone, is donating $100m from his own fortune to launch a scholarship he hopes will rival the prestigious Rhodes programme that brought a young Bill Clinton to Britain’s Oxford university. He will raise a further $200m from business and investors around the world to help sponsor 200 students for a Master’s degree at Tsinghua. The aim is to promote greater understanding between the future elite of China and that of the rest of the world.

This is a groundbreaking initiative. China has never opened its university system to foreigners to this extent. It comes as the new leadership is discussing reform on all levels. And without a world-class educational establishment, China’s international prestige will always be in question. Though Tsinghua has educated the president, Xi Jinping, and many of China’s ruling elite, it remains largely unknown outside its country. Allowing in a large contingent of the best and brightest from around the world will not only enhance its reputation and expose it to the demands of international education. It will also groom a corps with unique experience of the world’s newest superpower.