Yung Wing

Yung Wing was a Chinese-American diplomat and businessman who in 1854 became the first recorded Chinese graduate of an American university, Yale College. In 1863 Zeng Guofan sent him to the United States to buy machinery, which went into the Jiangnan Arsenal at Shanghai. He persuaded the Qing government to send young students abroad and organised the Chinese Educational Mission, which brought 120 of them to New England from 1872 until it was disbanded in 1881. A naturalised American citizen from 1852, he lost that status under the Chinese Exclusion Act.