Re: China as a high tech source

[Marvin Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

China Luring Scholars to Make Universities Great
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
NYT
October 28, 2005

SHANGHAI, Oct. 26 - When Andrew Chi-chih Yao, a Princeton professor who is
recognized as one of the United States' top computer scientists, was
approached by Qinghua University in Beijing last year to lead an advanced
computer studies program, he did not hesitate.

It did not matter that he would be leaving one of America's top universities
for one little known outside China. Or that after his birth in Shanghai, he
was raised in Taiwan and spent his entire academic career in the United
States. He felt he could contribute to his fast-rising homeland.

"Patriotism does have something to do with it, because I just cannot imagine
going anywhere else, even if the conditions were equal," said Dr. Yao, who
is 58.

China wants to transform its top universities into the world's best within a
decade, and it is spending billions of dollars to woo big-name scholars like
Dr. Yao and build first-class research laboratories. The effort is China's
latest bid to raise its profile as a great power.

China has already pulled off one of the most remarkable expansions of
education in modern times, increasing the number of undergraduates and
people who hold doctoral degrees fivefold in 10 years.

"First-class universities increasingly reflect a nation's overall power," Wu
Bangguo, China's secondranking leader, said recently in a speech here
marking the 100th anniversary of Fudan, the country's first modern
university.

The model is simple: recruit top foreign-trained Chinese and
Chinese-American specialists, set them up in well-equipped labs, surround
them with the brightest students and give them tremendous leeway. In a
minority of cases, they receive American-style pay; in others, they are
lured by the cost of living, generous housing and the laboratories. How many
have come is unclear.

China is focusing on science and technology, areas that reflect the
country's development needs but also reflect the preferences of an
authoritarian system that restricts speech. The liberal arts often involve
critical thinking about politics, economics and history, and China's
government, which strictly limits public debate, has placed relatively
little emphasis on achieving international status in those subjects.

In fact, Chinese say - most often euphemistically and indirectly - that
those very restrictions on academic debate could hamper efforts to create
world-class universities.

"Right now, I don't think any university in China has an atmosphere
comparable to the older Western universities - Harvard or Oxford - in terms
of freedom of expression," said Lin Jianhua, Beijing University's executive
vice president. "We are trying to give the students a better environment,
but in order to do these things we need time. Not 10 years, but maybe one or
two generations."

Nonetheless, the new confidence about entering the world's educational elite
is heard among politicians and university administrators, students and
professors.

"Maybe in 20 years M.I.T. will be studying Qinghua's example," says Rao
Zihe, director of the Institute of Biophysics at Qinghua University, an
institution renowned for its sciences and regarded by many as China's finest
university. "How long it will take to catch up can't be predicted, but in
some respects we are already better than the Harvards today."

In only a generation, China has sharply increased the proportion of its
college-age population in higher education, to roughly 20 percent now from
1.4 percent in 1978. In engineering alone, China is producing 442,000 new
undergraduates a year, along with 48,000 graduates with masters' degrees and
8,000 Ph.D's.

But only Beijing University and a few other institutions have been
internationally recognized as superior. Since 1998, when Jiang Zemin, then
China's leader, officially began the effort to transform Chinese
universities, state financing for higher education has more than doubled,
reaching $10.4 billion in 2003, the last year for which an official figure
is available.

Xu Tian, a leading geneticist who was trained at Yale and still teaches
there, runs a laboratory at Fudan University that performs innovative work
on the transposition of genes. On Aug. 12 his breakthrough research was
featured on the cover of the prestigious journal Cell, a first for a Chinese
scientist.

Beijing University drew on the talents of Tian Gang, a leading mathematician
from M.I.T., in setting up an international research center for advanced
mathematics, among other high-level research centers. Officials at Beijing
University estimate that as much as 40 percent of its faculty was trained
overseas, most often in the United States.

The president of Yale University, Richard C. Levin, interviewed in Shanghai,
where he was the featured guest at Fudan's centennial celebration in late
September, also had high praise for China's students.

"China has 20 percent of the world's population, and it is safe to say it
has more than 20 percent of the world's best students," he said. "They have
the raw talent."

But Mr. Levin also noted that China's low labor costs simplified the effort
to upgrade. He said he had been astounded by the new laboratories at
Jiaotong University in Shanghai, which he said could be built in China for
$50 a square foot, compared with $500 a square foot at Yale.

Some critics say that the country is trying to achieve excellence in too
many areas at once and that the plans of the 30 or so universities selected
for heavy state investment duplicate efforts, sacrificing excellence. Even
Mr. Levin tempered his enthusiasm with a warning that the "top schools have
expanded much too fast and are diluting quality."

In many cases, though, the toughest criticism comes from people who have
worked in the system.

"It is important for different universities to have different qualities,
just like a symphony," said Yang Fujia, a nuclear physicist and former
president of Fudan. "But all Chinese universities want to be comprehensive.
Everybody wants to be the piano, having a medical school and lots of
graduate students."

Mr. Yang, who leads a small experimental university in Ningbo, also
criticized the lack of autonomy given to many Chinese researchers.

"At Princeton one mathematician spent nine years without publishing a paper,
and then solved a problem that had been around for 360 years," Mr. Yang
said, a reference to Andrew J. Wiles and his solution to Fermat's last
theorem in the early 1990's. "No one minded that, because they appreciate
the dedication to hard work there. We don't have that spirit yet in China."

Similarly, Ge Jianxiong, a distinguished historical geographer at Fudan,
said Chinese culture often demands speedy results, which could undermine
research. "In China projects are always short-term, say three years," he
said. "Then they want you to produce a book, a voluminous book. In real
research you've got to give people the freedom to produce good results, and
not just the results they want."

Mr. Ge added that education suffered here because "it has always been
regarded as a tool of politics."

Dr. Yao said he had expected to concentrate on creating a world-class Ph.D.
program but had found surprising weaknesses in undergraduate training and
had decided to teach at that level. "You can't just say I'll only do the
cutting-edge stuff," he said. "You've got to teach the basics really well
first."

But the biggest weakness, many Chinese academics indicated, is the lack of
academic freedom. Mr. Yang, the former president of Fudan University, warned
that if the right atmosphere was not cultivated, great thinkers from
overseas might come to China for a year or two, only to leave frustrated.

Gong Ke, a vice president of Qinghua University, said universities had "the
duty to guarantee academic freedom."

"We have professors who teach here, foreigners, who teach very differently
from the Chinese government's point of view," he added. "Some of them really
criticize the economic policy of China."

Li Ao, a writer in Taiwan, visited Beijing University in September and gave
a speech calling for greater academic freedom and independence from the
government. The next day, after reportedly coming under heavy official
pressure, he delivered a far tamer version elsewhere. .

The Chinese government also censors university online bulletin boards and
discussion groups, and recently prevented students at Zhongshan University
in Guangzhou from conversing freely with visiting elected officials from
Hong Kong.

Students here are not encouraged to challenge authority or received wisdom.
For some, that helps explain why China has never won a Nobel Prize. What is
needed most now, some of China's best scholars say, are bold, original
thinkers.

"The greatest thing we've done in the last 20 years is lift 200 million
people out of poverty," said Dr. Xu. "What China has not realized yet,
though, if it truly wants to go to the next level, is to understand that
numbers are not enough.

"We need a new revolution to get us away from a culture that prizes becoming
government officials. We must learn to reward real innovation, independent
thought and genuine scholarly work."