Tsinghua University, one of China's universities which trained many of China's top leaders, is bound to receive a $300 million donation from no less than an American mogul, Blackstone Group investment company founder Stephen Schwarzman.

The donation will spearhead a scholarship program whose main goal is to bring 200 global students to study in China every year. Mr Schwarzman has committed $100 million to come from his personal funds, while the other $200 million will be raised from donations by private donors which has business interests in China.

"China is no longer an elective course, it's really core curriculum," Mr Schwarzman said on the 'Face the Nation' TV show.

Of the total 200 students, 45 per cent will come from the United States, 20 percent from China and the others will come from Europe, South Korea, Japan and India. Effective in 2016, the Schwarzman scholars will study for one year at Tsinghua University in Beijing in a master's program in public policy, economics, business and international relations.

Admitting the "center of the world's economy is moving to Asia," Mr Schwarzman said it would be best to create an education-based linkages program that he hoped "one day help shape the future of international discourse and diplomacy."

"I realize that China is not going to slow its growth just to convenience others," he said. "The chance that you won't have more friction over time strikes me as low."

Tsinghua University was where most of China's top leaders were trained, including current President XI Jinping and his predecessor Hu Jintao.

Ranked 63rd among the 400 richest people in the US, the 66-year-old Mr Schwarzman has a net worth of about $6.5 billion, according to Forbes.

Donations to the Schwarzman Scholarship program at Tsinghua University has generated positive replies from BP PLC, Caterpillar Inc and General Electric, among others.

Patterned after the Rhodes Scholarship program in the early 20th century, the Schwarzman Scholarship program targets to do just the same - for the Western world to better understand China.

"The American people, as the Chinese proverb goes, are at risk of having a 'frog's eye view of the world' - the isolated perspective of the frog at the bottom of the well," Mr Schwarzman said at a ceremony in Beijing announcing the donation, stressing Americans know "next to nothing" about China.

In the past decade alone, China's economy grew more than fourfold, outstripping Japan to become the world's second-largest economy.