First China Fellows Sponsored by Blackstone Co-Founder Are Selected

The Schwarzman Scholars program has announced its first class of international fellows, The New York Times reports. The Beijing-based fellowship program backed by Stephen Schwarzman, chairman and co-founder of the Blackstone Group, a global asset-management firm, is modeled on the Rhodes Scholarships.

Fellowship recipients, who will earn master’s degrees at Tsinghua University, were selected from a pool of 3,000 applicants by a panel of judges who included the former CIA director David Petraeus and Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas.

Mr. Schwarzman’s $100-million gift to establish the program led to his ranking in 23rd place on The Chronicle‘s 2014 list of America’s most generous donors. His goal is to establish a $450 million endowment to support up to 200 students annually: 45 percent from the United States, 20 percent from China, and 35 percent from other countries.