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The struggle to develop innovation in Chinese society

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The struggle to develop innovation in Chinese society Empty The struggle to develop innovation in Chinese society

Post  Alex Thu Oct 21, 2010 4:00 am

Article Here

Wanted: Chinese innovators, home-grown preferred
John Schoen / msnbc.com
CHENGDU, China


Creating a new generation of higher-skilled workers is both a means and an end for China’s ambitious development plan. With wages rising for low-skilled factory jobs, Chinese leaders say they need to expand the base of higher-paying jobs and create the highly trained work force needed to fill those jobs.

But as China overhauls its education system, to create new technology and high-wage jobs, China has embarked on a big investment in education. But traditional Chinese teaching methods stress memorization - not thinking "outside the box."

Upgrading an education system to serve a continent-sized country of 1.3 billion people would be a monumental challenge under any circumstances. A big boost in spending has raised China's enrollment rate to 95 percent of primary school-aged children from 80 percent in 2001, according to a recent World Bank report.

But those "high average enrollment ratios masked inequality in access and quality” between prosperous urban areas and poor rural counties and villages, the report found. It added that “the problem was particularly marked in the western region.”

China’s leaders are also wrestling with a more fundamental problem. Some observers argue that the traditional Chinese approach to education doesn’t encourage the kind of independent thought that fosters innovation and risk taking.

"The education system rewards hard work and memorizing things," said K.C. Kwok, an economist at the University of Hong Kong. "They reward politeness and humbleness. If you want to critically challenge your teacher, that’s considered impolite. "

Since former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's "opening up" reforms of the 1980s, rebuilding higher education also has meant opening up to Western styles of teaching and recruiting teachers trained in the West. Teachers with international experience are more open to students challenging their ideas, according to a student at the state-run University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, who did not give her name when she spoke at a recent meeting with U.S. journalists.

The move to overhaul China's education system to foster independent thinking and fresh ideas is critical to Beijing’s aspiration to develop world class “China brands” that attract the same kind of global demand that major western brands enjoy with Chinese consumers. The goal is to create products that are so innovative, well-designed or well-made that they can compete with foreign brands.

"China is looking to find that breakthrough — whether it’s in appliances or some other field — where they develop an international brand that when you hear the name, you think, 'China is really coming up,'" said Jim Thompson, head of a global shipping company based in Hong Kong. "It’s going to will take awhile but I think it will happen. They’re trying to get to that point.”

There are signs that China’s investment in higher education and research is paying off. China's global patent applications are growing five times more quickly than those of the U.S., and total patent volume is expected to top both the U.S. and Japan next year, according to a recent analysis by Thomson Reuters. Officials here proudly note that China publishes more papers in international journals than any country but the United States.

But the quality of some of those papers has been called into question. Last December, a British journal retracted 70 papers from a Chinese university, all by the same two scientists, saying the work had been fabricated.

"Academic fraud, misconduct and ethical violations are very common in China," professor Rao Yi, dean of the life sciences school at Peking University, told The Associated Press. "It is a big problem."


Opening China's higher education system to Western styles of teaching poses another risk to the ruling regime. Students exposed to teachers from the West may develop a taste for Western-style personal freedoms of thought and expression.

I left out the critical parts of this article. Perhaps the greatest advantage western society has over Chinese society is its established culture of innovation and free thinking. If we think about the tenets of Western Culture which we could roughly view as democracy, rights, individualism and capitalism they do promote competition and innovation, which are at odds somewhat with China's desire for social harmony and China's traditional philosophies. Last night I spoke to a girl who is currently studying in England at Northampton University for a semester. She told me how much she was enjoying the freedom and free-thinking approach of her studies. If China could match the West in terms of education, Chinese education could become world-class and self-sufficient. Let's hope it can! Cool
Alex
Alex

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