Abstract
This thesis assesses the three types of social remittances that were being transferred to China by Western-educated Chinese students and scholars in the three study-abroad waves between 1872 and the present. It examines how Western-educated Chinese students and scholars used the accumulated social remittances upon their returns to promote China's social, political, and economic developments in different time periods. \r The Three Study Abroad Waves had different historical backgrounds and served different historical purposes. My aim is to use theories from the field of transnational migration and development to investigate China's study-abroad phenomena, in order to illustrate how returned Chinese intellectuals have used the accumulated social remittances transferred from the West to help China become increasingly modernized.