China’s storied inventiveness during its imperial past produced bronze-smelting, iron tools, silk production, printing, and many other world-changing innovations at times when their education system was based largely on rote memorization and group conformity. These are teaching strategies that are now considered stifling to independent thinking and inventiveness.

Upcoming Conference

Register now for the “Education for Innovation in India, China and America” conference, to be held at The Emory Conference Center, March 2-3, 2007.

Abstracts for posters will be accepted until 4 January 2007; all are welcome to attend.

This Emory conference is co-sponsored by the ICA Institute and the Sino-American Education Consortium. Full details available at www.innovation07.org.

This tendency toward rote memorization persists in many ways in Chinese classrooms today, at both secondary and university levels. The education system, according to many observers, is characterized at all levels by didactic instruction, individual work, pressure for high achievement scores on exams, obedience, and de-emphasis of independent thinking.

The idea that students from Asian cultures are rote memorizers taught by strict and repressive teachers has led to a concept deemed the “paradox of the Chinese learner.”¹ If Asian students suffer such oppressive classroom conditions, why do they outperform Western students in mathematics and science in comparative multi-national assessments such as TIMSS (http://nces.ed.gov/timss/) and PISA (www.pisa.oecd.org)? Why is it that they not only demonstrate deeper content knowledge but also better conceptual development than American students of similar age and grade levels?

There is no accepted explanation among education experts for this apparent paradox. But one suggestion is that Chinese students learn at early ages how to be “active memorizers.” Maybe they have learned how to use memorization as a tool for concept development rather than a block to it. It has even been suggested that this may be related to their earliest experiences of language learning as children. Researchers have shown that when Chinese (also Korean and Japanese) mothers talk to their babies, they use mainly verbs and other relational words, while English-speaking mothers use many more nouns and focus more on object naming. Some authorities suggest that these early language learning experiences may influence a child’s problem-solving and theory formation capacities later in life.

When comparing Chinese and American students, there is another apparent paradox. If students in American high schools compare poorly to Asian students in mathematics and science knowledge, and in reasoning skills, why are U.S. colleges and universities admired worldwide for their ability to produce innovative contributors to science and technology? Why have Chinese graduate students traditionally come in large numbers to U.S. institutions for doctoral training, many to return home to take up positions as university faculty or administrators?

The explanation here seems to lie in the legacy of the very different historical roots of the two nations’ educational systems. Unlike the early Chinese academies 2500 years ago, in which students memorized long passages of Confucius’ texts. American universities can be traced to the Greeks, especially Plato’s Academy (428-347 BCE) on the outskirts of Athens. As John Thelin has shown in his recent work, A History of American Higher Education, when universities first arose in Europe during the Middle Ages and then in America during colonial times, students lived together in residential colleges, in close contact with their instructors, creating a very special kind of learning community.² Professors lectured to students from prepared notes, but they also held classes in which students engaged in “formal disputation”. Disputation was a form of oral debate where students, individually or in groups, opposed one another in intellectual argument.

Just as in Plato’s Academy, debaters cited major authorities to bolster and justify their arguments. Students were encouraged to think freely and critically, to follow an argument wherever it might lead. Of great significance, this method of encouraging critical thinking is now widely used in modern graduate and senior seminars in American universities in virtually every science discipline. So although students in “lower division” science courses (those in the first two years of university life) often complain about having to sit through classes that promote passive learning with a heavy dependence on rote memorization and too many exams, those who go on to more advanced work in their third and fourth years of college, and in post-graduate courses, are treated differently. Classes are smaller and are often designed as seminars or discussion groups, where students may read research literature, engage in group problem-solving exercises, and prepare talks in which they must defend arguments with evidence.

While researchers work on theories to explain these apparent paradoxes, policy makers in both China and the U.S. are looking for ways to make improvements in higher education. Exploring the strengths and weaknesses of each other’s educational systems (see sidebar) can inform the development of experimental programs designed to produce better results. Both China and the U.S. have much to gain from such explorations.

The post Education for Innovation: A Look at China & the U.S. appeared first on China Research Center.

Highway Transportation

The most dramatic developments are in transportation. Newly built or refurbished highways abound. The hard-surfaced, two-lane “Petroleum Highway” cutting across the eastern part of the torrid Takmalikan desert opened in the late 1990s. Green belts of tamarind bushes and white poplar trees run alongside its 400 kilometer length, to a width of about 30 yards on either side. The size of the saplings indicate they were only recently planted, while a placard at the north end of the highway indicates that China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) planted the trees in 2003-2005 at a cost of RMB 218 million. The trees would not last long in the Takmalikan without irrigation, and over 100 wells have been drilled at standard distances along the highway to supply water to the plants via Israeli-derived drip irrigation (in which perforated plastic tubes carry water to the roots of plants).

But services have not yet been built along the highway; signs warn travelers to fill up with gasoline before setting out. As the name “Petroleum Highway” indicates, the road is intended to serve as the backbone for exploitation of the Takmalikan’s rich petroleum resources.

A highway built in the late 1990s also extends east of Hetian (Khotan in the old usage) linking up with the southern end of the Petroleum Highway at Minfeng. Prior to that, there was, according to locals, no modern road east of Hetian. A very good, U.S.-interstate or German autobahn-style limited-access highway has just opened extending north from Kuerle (Korla in the old style) north- a city that hosts Mobil Oil Corporation offices in the effort to exploit Takmalikan oil-to Turpan and then further north to Urumuqi, Xinjiang’s capital. This provides good road access between the rail junctions at Urumuqi and Korla, at the northern end of the “Petroleum Highway.”

North of Kuche, a city lying about two hundred kilometers west of Kuerle on the “northern silk road” along the edge of the Takmalikan, surveyors are at work laying out alignments for widening and improving of currently narrow roads winding through the foothills of the Tianshan Mountains. Construction equipment is being marshaled along those routes, and one old compound has been designated headquarters for the construction effort and was festooned with new signs and propaganda banners proclaiming the importance of roads for Xinjiang’s development. The hard-surface highway extending north of Kuche to the ancient ruined city of Subashi ends at the entrance to that ancient ruin. Locals told me that plans are being made to push the hard surface road north through a rugged canyon to link up with the soon-to-be expanded highways north of Kuche.

A highway has been pushed over the Kyrgyz-China border at Irkestan Pass about 150 kilometers west of Kashgar. A detailed map of Xinjiang published in Beijing in 1999 did not show such a road (nor did earlier CIA-published maps I had consulted), yet the road was in heavy operation in mid-2006. Truck traffic was heavy. Scrap metal seemed to be the major commodity flowing from Kyrgyzstan to Kashgar, while Chinese manufactured goods flowed west. A large “port” has been constructed just below the great rise to the crest of the mountains on the Chinese side, where there was abundant traffic and commercial activity. Several years ago the Asian Development Bank decided to fund two trans-Kyrgyz highways-one crossing into Kyrgyzstan from China at Irkeshtan, and the other at Torugart Pass, 100 kilometers to the north.

Across Xinjiang, gas stations are opening like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. Whether because of growing market demand or government directive is unclear, but such stations are abundant. Most have that just-opened look, and many others are under construction. There is apparently sharp competition in this area between CNPC, Sinopec, and Xinjiang companies, including one affiliated with the PLA Construction and Production Corps in Xinjiang. It is not uncommon to see several filling stations within close proximity of one another.

Telecommunications

Many kilometers of fiber optic cable have been recently laid across both northern and southern Xinjiang. The paths of these cables have been marked with two-foot high, white-painted concrete markers to prevent construction crews or farmers from damaging them, and these fresh-looking markers parallel both the “southern silk road” and the “northern silk road” routes we traveled. Locals confirmed that these lines had been recently put in. There were also frequent, moderately sized, and apparently newly constructed stations along these new cable lines. I took these to be booster stations associated with the operation of the fiber optic cable. Most of these stations were emblazoned with the “China Mobile” logo. Further testament to the newness of the fiber optic cable network were frequent, and new looking, propaganda signs exhorting people to protect and respect the fiber optic cables (guang xian). Lots of new mobile phone transmission towers also were sprouting, again along both the northern and southern rims of the Takmalikan.

Education

There are many newly constructed school buildings in villages and small towns in Xinjiang. It appeared that much money and effort is going into basic education. Again current propaganda themes suggested as much. “Human talent (ren cai) is the basis for development” was a common slogan on signs and banners.

The Petroleum Industry

Large scale exploration and production activity is underway at the Lunnan oilfield east of Kuche. Dozens of pumps were in operation and visible from the highway, reminding me very much of the Oklahoma oil patches I worked as a teenager. Many of the pumps looked very fresh. New wells were being drilled-perhaps a half dozen were visible from the highway, and heavy drilling, pumping, and storage equipment was being moved about over the highways. New storage tanks have been built alongside older and smaller ones. There was intense truck activity to and from storage facilities, although some new pipelines were under construction as well. There was one large, perhaps 18-inch pipeline being laid to, or perhaps from, one of the storage facilities. An impressive, largish, and newly rigged out “Lunnan oilfield base” (Lunnan youtian jidi) was visible and advertised from the highway, apparently to organize all this activity. Over the horizon across the northern rim of the Takmalikan, railway trains of oil tank cars and coal or ore hopper cars moved at frequent intervals.

Preparations are underway to search for petroleum further into the Takmalikan, apparently in the vicinity of the new “Petroleum Highway.” Along that highway were visible three parks of construction equipment, truck-mounted drilling rigs, tanker trucks, and miscellaneous heavy trucks and other vehicles. Some of these motor parks were flanked by tent compounds, apparently for the soon-to-arrive workers. The vehicle parks had a strong military look, but involvement of the PLA was not apparent. PLA men were, however, stringing new power or telephone cables along the “southern silk road” route.

Agriculture

Agricultural machinery was not abundant. There were some mechanical threshers, fans (for winnowing grain), and tractors in the fields, but much more agricultural production seemed to be based on animal or human muscle. People were threshing grain by beating it, winnowing by muscling it into the air, plowing with donkeys, or turning the soil with hoes or shovels. In Kuche a local government bureau concerns itself with agricultural mechanization. They have a rich field for activity.

Interestingly, there were many new grape trellises along both the northern and southern “silk road” routes. Common configurations were long archways leading out from the entrance of houses, or flanking one side of the house. One could ascertain recent construction from both the non-weathered character of the wood and the short size of the grape vines. Many trellises were under construction.

Apparently there is increasing demand for Xinjiang grapes. It may be that the popularity of wine along China’s east coast is creating new demand and, consequently, the expanded supply of Xinjiang grapes. Local demand for grapes might be increasing as well. Over the last several years, Xinjiang Uighurs (most of whom are forbidden by Islam to drink alcohol) have established fruit juice companies that produce high quality beverages patronized by many Xinjiang Uighurs for reasons of ethnic pride. Nonetheless, it seems hard to imagine that all those new trellises are supplying local demand.

Cotton production is another area of agriculture in which there is visible new activity. Cotton is Xinjiang’s major crop. There were several (a half dozen or so) newly built cotton ginning plants where seeds are removed and the raw fiber put in bales for shipment to east-coast textile centers. There was no evidence of foreign or Hong Kong investment in these facilities.

Extensive construction in villages along both the southern and northern “silk road” routes indicates growing prosperity at least in villages adjacent to highways. Houses and walls of unbaked mud and animal manure are being torn down and replaced with dwellings of fired yellow bricks. Hundreds of houses, sometimes whole sections of villages, were being rebuilt in this fashion. Trucks carting new, fired yellow bricks to and fro were abundant. Piles of yellow brick beside houses are as common as newly built houses.

Where does this prosperity come from? It is apparently not from increased productivity due to mechanization. Maybe it comes from the increased production of cash crops such as grapes? From increased government purchase prices for cotton, or reduced agricultural taxes? Aside from grapes, the other apparent cash commodity is sheep, the major item in the fabulous Kashgar animal market. A mature male sheep sold for Rmb 800 (about US$100).

Tourism

Tourism is another growth industry in Xinjiang. Many new “tourist sites” are being developed. The Han-Tang-era cemetery at Gaocheng outside Kuche has been graced with impressive gates where tickets are sold and brochures handed out, and a structure overlooking the cemetery. A “grape scenery” theme park – with admission only to motor-vehicle-borne tourists-has recently opened in Turpan. The “thousand Buddha caves” at Kirgzil north of Kuche have recently been extensively refurbished with concrete stairways and walkways to bear heavy traffic. At Kashgar, a monument has been recently built to the Han dynasty general Ban Chao and his “36 heroes,” who brought the Kashgar region into the Han orbit.

While there are a fair number of Western tourists, it seems that the overwhelming majority are Chinese vacationing from elsewhere in China. At all of the tourist sites mentioned above, Chinese tourists far outnumber Westerners.

Dearth of Foreign Investment
There was little evidence of foreign investment or other commercial activity by foreign firms: no joint ventures, no advertising, no businessmen bustling about hotels. I saw one Volkswagen dealership and indication of involvement of a French geophysical company in oil exploration. As noted earlier, Mobil is also involved in oil activity. There was also the ever-present Coca-Cola and Pepsi, but not much more. The contrast between this situation and the abundance of foreign commercial activity in lower Yangtze or the Pearl River Delta was striking. It may well be, however, that the impressive improvement of infrastructure currently underway in Xinjiang will lay a basis for greater future foreign commercial interest in Xinjiang.

The post Economic Transition Report on Xinjiang’s Development appeared first on China Research Center.

With a comparative development focus, Georgia Tech Professor and China specialist John Garver led a new program on East Asia hitting all of greater China as well as Japan. Organized around the concept of an “East Asian developmental state,” the 6-week program studied the development paths of Japan, Taiwan, Mainland China, and Hong Kong. Beginning with a week in Japan under the direction of Georgia Tech professor and eminent authority on Japan’s political economy, Dr. Brian Woodall, the program first studied Japan’s post-Meiji and post-WW II developmental experience. The group then traveled by ship to Kaohsiung, stopping en route in Naha and Ishigaki in the Ruyuku archipelago. Intensive classes were held aboard ship while at sea.

A week in Kaohsiung and a week in Taipei integrated classes by Professor Garver and National Sun Yat-sen University professors, with frequent visits to enterprises, export processing zones, harbors, and political party and governmental offices. The group then flew to Hong Kong and traveled by ferry up the Pearl River to Nansha Information Technology Park — a new technology development zone affiliated with Hong Kong Science and Technology University, a partner of Georgia Tech’s located at the west end of the large bridge over the Pearl River at Humen (the site of major naval battles in the 1st Opium War). The group spent a week touring newly emerged manufacturing centers around the Pearl River Delta (Shenzhen, Dongguan, Zhongshan) using Nansha as a base, and discussing the powerful economic symbiosis that has emerged between the Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong. Several days in Guangzhou were then followed by a final week in Hong Kong. The program will run again in summer 2007 and is open to non-Georgia Tech students from Georgia and elsewhere (http://www.eastasiaprogram.gatech.edu).

A second Georgia Tech program offers a different China experience. Based at Jiaotong University in Shanghai, students can choose from nine different courses in engineering, social science and humanities. This past summer, the second year of the program, 52 students from 15 different schools/majors at Tech participated. Led by co-directors Haizheng Li and G. Tong Zhou, this program is an institute-wide program jointly sponsored by the Office of International Education, the College of Engineering / School of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Ivan Allen College / School of Economics at Georgia Tech, in partnership with Shanghai Jiaotong University (SJTU).

The third annual Georgia Tech-Shanghai Summer Program will be launched in 2007. Classes will be held during the nine-week period May 21, 2007 – July 21, 2007.
This program is open to students from all U.S. colleges and universities (http://www.shanghaisummer.gatech.edu/).

Another University System of Georgia program also has a range of course offerings that can be taken from a campus based in China. Summer program director, Baogang Guo, professor of social sciences at Dalton State University, had 27 students and five USG faculty members participate in the Summer Study in China–General Studies Program between May 9 and June 5. The program offered ten courses ranging from history, political science, English, ethics, and business. They also visited Beijing, Xi’an, Zhengzhou, Luoyang, Anyang, and Shanghai.

A second program offered by the University System coordinated with the General Studies program to allow students to piggyback language and culture onto the general course curriculum. Led by May Gao of Kennesaw State, this program was based at Yangzhou University in Yangzhou City, in East China’s Jiangsu Province in the fast growing Yangtze River Delta. The program involves 4 weeks of study on campus as well as travel to Beijing, Nanjing, Zhenjiang, Maoshan, Suzhou, and Shanghai.

At UGA, Bob Grafstein, professor of political science, led a Maymester trip to Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, with plans to run this program again next year (http://www.uga.edu/columns/060717/news-study.html), and Ari Levine, professor of history, led a senior-year Foundation Fellows trip to Beijing and Xi’an over spring break for students in the UGA undergraduate Honors Program.

Student interest in China has also been reflected in increasing demand for Chinese language courses. Emory and Georgia Tech are reporting record numbers of first year students registering for Chinese. New full time Chinese language faculty members started at both Agnes Scott and Kennesaw State this fall, launching those two schools’ Chinese language programs.

The post Asia and China Opportunities Expand for Georgia Students appeared first on China Research Center.

(This article first appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on September 19, 2006; reprinted with permission from Fei_Ling Wang)

Anticorruption is now a serious political issue and an ever-popular demand on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. As recent mass protests show, the Taiwanese people are openly holding their president accountable for his associates’ and family members’ corrupt behavior. But to address corruption across the strait, Beijing still relies largely on the secretive, often politically motivated work of “discipline inspectors.”

Great hopes have been pinned to the peaceful rise of Chinese power, which is widely viewed to be in the interests of the Chinese people and world peace. China’s rise now increasingly depends on the successful political transformation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the direction of the rule of law and democracy. Key in catalyzing this change is the already democratic Republic of China (ROC) on the island of Taiwan.

Since the time of its first emperor, Qin Shihuang, China had been under centralized, authoritarian rule. But when the ROC was formed in 1912, hopes were high for democratic political change. However, external and internal wars, self-serving warlords, and abysmal ROC leaders tragically retarded China’s political progress. In 1949, a peasant rebellion influenced by communist ideology created the PRC and drove the ROC offshore to Taiwan. Mao Zedong, the self-proclaimed new Qin Shihuang, perpetuated and intensified mainland China’s despotic political tradition.

Today’s China is once again on the verge of parting from its Qin system. Yet democratic reform in the PRC is still far from a certainty, much less a success.

Fortunately, there are reasons to be optimistic. For one thing, the ROC has survived since 1949 and is prospering today. Over the past decades, the Taiwanese have proudly proven that Western ideas of capitalism, freedom, and the rule of law can thrive together with Chinese culture. Taiwan has gradually but successfully transformed from an authoritarian, one-party system into a young democracy, driven by the combined force of bottom-up and top-down efforts, as well as conducive foreign influences. The Taiwan story of economic growth and political change should be considered a great success story for all Chinese, on and off the island.

Unfortunately, the Taiwan story has been grossly discounted and marginalized by leaders on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Rather than viewing Taiwan as a viable force of political opposition and a model of successful political change, China sees the ROC as just a local regime taking refuge under foreign protection and seeking independence. And Beijing’s stubborn refusal to enact political reforms has made full independence even more attractive to many Taiwanese. Beijing has also successfully portrayed Taipei as an anti-China traitor that has harmed and divided the Motherland. Many Chinese are therefore simply led to despise and reject Taiwan’s story of success.

This dreadful situation must change. The political rivalry from Taipei should stimulate rather than stifle, China’s democratization. Instead of propelling China into imperialism and militarism, Chinese nationalism could become a powerful driving force to constrain rising Chinese power and reorient it toward democracy. Taiwan must act as a catalyst for this because only with a democratic, free, and peaceful China as a responsible stakeholder in the international community can the Taiwan story securely continue. And only by assisting the peaceful rise and change of China can Taiwan solidify lasting support from the US.

To successfully help China change politically and rise peacefully, the Taiwanese craving to declare independence – while understandable – must be sacrificed.

The latest signals from Taipei are promising. The opposition leader Ma Ying-Jeou, while upholding the “one-China” principle, insists that unification with the Chinese mainland must be conditional: The PRC must democratize, and Beijing must be held accountable for its misdeeds. More encouraging, many senior cadres of the ruling party (which has traditionally supported independence), now assert that “unification is one of our future choices, too,” while echoing Mr. Ma’s conditions. The maturing Taiwanese democracy seems to be making the hard choices for its future, which is inseparable from the fortune of Greater China.

The United States must also assist. A sustainable security commitment is required to ensure the democratic viability of Taiwan. Washington should encourage and support the emerging consensus among the Taiwanese elite to make conditional unification with China a firm future choice. It should urge and facilitate direct Beijing-Taipei talks about their one-China political future.

Federation-style political integration under the rule of law will allow Greater China to abandon the Qin political system for good. Only when the Chinese government is accountable to its own people can (and should) there be a peaceful rise of China. Toward that end, the democratic, free, and Chinese Taiwan will work wonders when it genuinely – but conditionally – unites with China.

€ Fei-Ling Wang is professor of international affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His most recent book is “Organizing through Division and Exclusion: China’s Hukou System.”

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