Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India Are Reshaping Their Futures—and Yours

Chapter One

Reimagining China and India

The educations of most Americans, even graduates of prestigious Ivy League schools, barely acknowledge China and India. In his 2001 commencement speech, Yale University’s president, Richard C. Levin, lamented, “The Mayor of Shanghai asked me why … every schoolchild in China can identify the author and date of our Declaration of Independence and so few of ours can identify when the Qing Dynasty fell, when the Long March occurred, and when the Communists took power.”¹

How could the 2001 graduating class of this prestigious Ivy League school not know more about China? After all, the Yale-China connection has proved resilient over several decades. Yung Wing, a member of the Class of 1854 at Yale College and ...