超级军网纽约时报：中国吸引国外顶级专家创建世界一流大学
来源：百度文库 编辑：超级军网 时间：2024/04/30 15:10:15
The New York Times
October 28, 2005
China Luring Foreign Scholars to Make Its Universities Great
2004年，被公认为美国最顶尖计算机专家之一的普林斯顿大学教授姚期智（Andrew Chi-Chih Yao）在受到清华大学邀请其前往中国主持一个计算机学科项目时，他丝毫没有犹豫，欣然前往。
他似乎对要离开美国最顶级的大学前往一个在中国以外并不出名的大学并不在乎。出生在上海，姚期智在台湾长大，而他的整个学术生涯都是在美国渡过的。他觉得，他可以为飞速发展的家乡作出一些贡献。
“我想这和爱国有关，因为我不可以想象去其他地方，如果条件设备基本相同”，58岁的姚期智说。
纽约时报10月28日发表文章表示，在十年内，中国政府希望将其顶级大学变成世界级的大学，所以中国花费数十亿美元来吸引像姚一样的明星学者和建立世界级的研究实验室，而这些努力是中国提升国家竞争力及国际形像的又一表现。
中国已经开始推动现代史上最为世人所瞩目的教育扩张计划，十年间，大学本科生和博士生数量猛增了5倍。
“一流的大学可以反映一个国家的综合实力”，中共人大常委委员长吴邦国在庆祝上海复旦大学建校100周年典礼上说。
中国建立一流大学的模式很简单：聘用在国外受过教育的顶级中国学者和华裔专家，建立具有一流设备的实验室，然后吸引最优秀的学生以及给他们充分的空间发展。有些教授学者将得到美国式的待遇，有些则被相对较低的生活费用、慷慨的住房条件和优良的实验室设备所吸引，但到底多少学者教授会因此回到中国仍然未知。
中国将重点放在科学技术相关的科研项目，这从另一个角度反映了政府当局对言论自由的控制。人文学科通常会涉及对政治、经济和历史的尖锐思考，而严格控制公众言论的中国政府很明显不愿意在这些领域去争取国际级的地位。
事实上，中国学术界及媒体都曾委婉或间接地表示，对学术自由讨论的限制实际上阻扰了中国建成世界级的大学。
“现在而言，我不认为中国的任何大学拥有可以与西方老牌名校一样自由的学术氛围，比如哈佛大学和牛津大学。我们正在努力给学生提供尽可能好的氛围，但是就学术自由气氛而言，我们需要时间，不是10年，也许是一代人或者两代人的努力”，北京大学副校长林建华说。
然而，进入世界级精英教育强国行列的自信在政治家、大学管理者、学生和教授的言谈举止中随处可见。
“也许在20年内，清华大学将成为麻省理工(MIT)的学习榜样。我们需要多久时间赶上西方一流大学仍不确定，但是在一些方面我们已经做的比哈佛大学要好了”，分子生物物理与结构生物学专家清华大学教授饶子和说。
仅仅用了一代人的时间，中国接受过高等教育的人数比例急速增加，从1978年的1.4%增至现在的20%。仅工程学，中国现在一年培养442，000名本科生，48，000名研究生和8000名博士生。
但是，只有北京大学在内为数不多的几所大学在国际上享有崇高的声誉。从1998年以来，当时的中国领导人江泽民开始推动中国大学的改革，而高等院校的政府拨款增加了2倍，2003年达到104亿美元。
在耶鲁大学接受过教育的遗传学专家许田(Xu Tian)在复旦大学负责建立和运作一个实验室，从事基因转移方面的创新性研究。2005年8月15日，他因在其研究上的突破成为首位登上了业界权威杂志“细胞”(Cell)封面的中国人。
北京大学将麻省理工着名数学家田刚招至旗下成立一个具有世界级的数学研究中心。北京大学的官员表示，大约40%的北京大学教授是在国外接受的教育，其中大多数是在美国。
耶鲁大学校长雷文(Richard C. Levin) 9月作为贵宾在参加上海复旦大学校庆时对中国学生的素质赞赏有加。
“中国人口占世界20%，所以可以说中国拥有世界20%最优秀的学生。他们很有天分。”，他说。
但是，雷文同时表示中国廉价的劳动力价格使中国大学硬件升级速度变得很简单。他表示，他对上海交通大学新实验室的数量感到震惊，在中国实验室一平方米的价格是50美元，而在耶鲁是500美元。
一些批评家表示，中国大学存在重复建设的现象，建设30所一流大学的计划实际上是造成了投资上的浪费，以牺牲优秀大学为代价。甚至雷文也警告，中国顶级大学扩张速度太快，质量因此将受到影响。而多数情况下，最严厉的批评来自工作于系统内部的人。
“就像一个交响乐团，不同的学校应有不同的强项，这是非常重要的。但是所有中国大学都想成为综合性大学，都想拥有医学院和众多的研究生，这就像乐队里每个人都想弹钢琴”，复旦大学前校长核物理学家杨福家说。
现在宁波管理一家实验性大学的杨福家同时批评中国的科研工作者缺少自主权。
“在普林斯顿大学，一个数学家可以工作9年来解决一个存在360年的问题而不需要发表一篇论文，没人会介意，因为他们尊重对科学的执着。但在中国，我们没有这种精神”，杨以数学家怀尔斯(Andrew J. Wiles)破解费尔马最后定理为例。
同样，复旦大学历史地理学教授葛剑雄表示，中国文化很浮躁，对科学研究很不利。“中国的科研项目通常是短期的，比如三年时间，然后便会有人要求你出版着作，而且越长越好。而真正的科研应该给人充分的自由来出成就，而不仅仅只是个结果”，他说。葛剑雄同时表示，大学教育的浮躁是因为教育长期以来被当作一种政治的工具。
姚期智表示，他期望能够集中精力建成世界级的博士学位项目，但却发现本科教育存在令人吃惊的缺陷，所以不得不从本科阶段着手。“你不能说，我们只做高端的科研，实际上，你首先必须将最基本的知识传授地很好”，他说。
但是，许多中国学者表示，中国大学教育最大的缺陷是缺乏学术自由。复旦大学前校长杨福家警告，如果一个好的学术气氛不能被培养，即便海外优秀的学者愿意回来，也会在一年或两年内失望地离去。
清华大学副校长龚克表示，大学有职责去保障学术的自由。
“我们有些海外归来的教授的教学方法在中国政府看来是非常习惯的，其中一些教授甚至批评中国的经济政策”，他说。
台湾作家李敖今年9月访问中国大陆在北京大学演讲呼吁中国政府允许更多的学术自由。但据说是因为屈服于来自官方的压力，李敖在别处同样的演讲不得不变得更为婉转。
中国政府最近更是阻止广州中山大学的学生与香港来访的官员自由交谈。
在中国，学生不鼓励去挑战权威，这在某种程度上解释了中国为什么至今没有获得诺贝尔奖。一些中国学者表示，现在中国最缺的就是敢言的思想家。
“在过去的20年里，我们所做最伟大的事情就是让2亿人口脱离贫困，但是，中国必须意识到，中国如果想再提升一个水平，就必须明白光是有数量是缘远不够的。
“我们需要一场新的革命使我们远离官场文化。我们必须学会去奖励真正的创新、独立的思考以及真实的学术作品”，他说。
The New York Times
October 28, 2005
China Luring Foreign Scholars to Make Its Universities Great
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
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 transxxxx 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 xxxxutive 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 transxxxx 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 perxxxxs 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 xxxxer 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 xxxxer 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."The New York Times
October 28, 2005
China Luring Foreign Scholars to Make Its Universities Great
2004年，被公认为美国最顶尖计算机专家之一的普林斯顿大学教授姚期智（Andrew Chi-Chih Yao）在受到清华大学邀请其前往中国主持一个计算机学科项目时，他丝毫没有犹豫，欣然前往。
他似乎对要离开美国最顶级的大学前往一个在中国以外并不出名的大学并不在乎。出生在上海，姚期智在台湾长大，而他的整个学术生涯都是在美国渡过的。他觉得，他可以为飞速发展的家乡作出一些贡献。
“我想这和爱国有关，因为我不可以想象去其他地方，如果条件设备基本相同”，58岁的姚期智说。
纽约时报10月28日发表文章表示，在十年内，中国政府希望将其顶级大学变成世界级的大学，所以中国花费数十亿美元来吸引像姚一样的明星学者和建立世界级的研究实验室，而这些努力是中国提升国家竞争力及国际形像的又一表现。
中国已经开始推动现代史上最为世人所瞩目的教育扩张计划，十年间，大学本科生和博士生数量猛增了5倍。
“一流的大学可以反映一个国家的综合实力”，中共人大常委委员长吴邦国在庆祝上海复旦大学建校100周年典礼上说。
中国建立一流大学的模式很简单：聘用在国外受过教育的顶级中国学者和华裔专家，建立具有一流设备的实验室，然后吸引最优秀的学生以及给他们充分的空间发展。有些教授学者将得到美国式的待遇，有些则被相对较低的生活费用、慷慨的住房条件和优良的实验室设备所吸引，但到底多少学者教授会因此回到中国仍然未知。
中国将重点放在科学技术相关的科研项目，这从另一个角度反映了政府当局对言论自由的控制。人文学科通常会涉及对政治、经济和历史的尖锐思考，而严格控制公众言论的中国政府很明显不愿意在这些领域去争取国际级的地位。
事实上，中国学术界及媒体都曾委婉或间接地表示，对学术自由讨论的限制实际上阻扰了中国建成世界级的大学。
“现在而言，我不认为中国的任何大学拥有可以与西方老牌名校一样自由的学术氛围，比如哈佛大学和牛津大学。我们正在努力给学生提供尽可能好的氛围，但是就学术自由气氛而言，我们需要时间，不是10年，也许是一代人或者两代人的努力”，北京大学副校长林建华说。
然而，进入世界级精英教育强国行列的自信在政治家、大学管理者、学生和教授的言谈举止中随处可见。
“也许在20年内，清华大学将成为麻省理工(MIT)的学习榜样。我们需要多久时间赶上西方一流大学仍不确定，但是在一些方面我们已经做的比哈佛大学要好了”，分子生物物理与结构生物学专家清华大学教授饶子和说。
仅仅用了一代人的时间，中国接受过高等教育的人数比例急速增加，从1978年的1.4%增至现在的20%。仅工程学，中国现在一年培养442，000名本科生，48，000名研究生和8000名博士生。
但是，只有北京大学在内为数不多的几所大学在国际上享有崇高的声誉。从1998年以来，当时的中国领导人江泽民开始推动中国大学的改革，而高等院校的政府拨款增加了2倍，2003年达到104亿美元。
在耶鲁大学接受过教育的遗传学专家许田(Xu Tian)在复旦大学负责建立和运作一个实验室，从事基因转移方面的创新性研究。2005年8月15日，他因在其研究上的突破成为首位登上了业界权威杂志“细胞”(Cell)封面的中国人。
北京大学将麻省理工着名数学家田刚招至旗下成立一个具有世界级的数学研究中心。北京大学的官员表示，大约40%的北京大学教授是在国外接受的教育，其中大多数是在美国。
耶鲁大学校长雷文(Richard C. Levin) 9月作为贵宾在参加上海复旦大学校庆时对中国学生的素质赞赏有加。
“中国人口占世界20%，所以可以说中国拥有世界20%最优秀的学生。他们很有天分。”，他说。
但是，雷文同时表示中国廉价的劳动力价格使中国大学硬件升级速度变得很简单。他表示，他对上海交通大学新实验室的数量感到震惊，在中国实验室一平方米的价格是50美元，而在耶鲁是500美元。
一些批评家表示，中国大学存在重复建设的现象，建设30所一流大学的计划实际上是造成了投资上的浪费，以牺牲优秀大学为代价。甚至雷文也警告，中国顶级大学扩张速度太快，质量因此将受到影响。而多数情况下，最严厉的批评来自工作于系统内部的人。
“就像一个交响乐团，不同的学校应有不同的强项，这是非常重要的。但是所有中国大学都想成为综合性大学，都想拥有医学院和众多的研究生，这就像乐队里每个人都想弹钢琴”，复旦大学前校长核物理学家杨福家说。
现在宁波管理一家实验性大学的杨福家同时批评中国的科研工作者缺少自主权。
“在普林斯顿大学，一个数学家可以工作9年来解决一个存在360年的问题而不需要发表一篇论文，没人会介意，因为他们尊重对科学的执着。但在中国，我们没有这种精神”，杨以数学家怀尔斯(Andrew J. Wiles)破解费尔马最后定理为例。
同样，复旦大学历史地理学教授葛剑雄表示，中国文化很浮躁，对科学研究很不利。“中国的科研项目通常是短期的，比如三年时间，然后便会有人要求你出版着作，而且越长越好。而真正的科研应该给人充分的自由来出成就，而不仅仅只是个结果”，他说。葛剑雄同时表示，大学教育的浮躁是因为教育长期以来被当作一种政治的工具。
姚期智表示，他期望能够集中精力建成世界级的博士学位项目，但却发现本科教育存在令人吃惊的缺陷，所以不得不从本科阶段着手。“你不能说，我们只做高端的科研，实际上，你首先必须将最基本的知识传授地很好”，他说。
但是，许多中国学者表示，中国大学教育最大的缺陷是缺乏学术自由。复旦大学前校长杨福家警告，如果一个好的学术气氛不能被培养，即便海外优秀的学者愿意回来，也会在一年或两年内失望地离去。
清华大学副校长龚克表示，大学有职责去保障学术的自由。
“我们有些海外归来的教授的教学方法在中国政府看来是非常习惯的，其中一些教授甚至批评中国的经济政策”，他说。
台湾作家李敖今年9月访问中国大陆在北京大学演讲呼吁中国政府允许更多的学术自由。但据说是因为屈服于来自官方的压力，李敖在别处同样的演讲不得不变得更为婉转。
中国政府最近更是阻止广州中山大学的学生与香港来访的官员自由交谈。
在中国，学生不鼓励去挑战权威，这在某种程度上解释了中国为什么至今没有获得诺贝尔奖。一些中国学者表示，现在中国最缺的就是敢言的思想家。
“在过去的20年里，我们所做最伟大的事情就是让2亿人口脱离贫困，但是，中国必须意识到，中国如果想再提升一个水平，就必须明白光是有数量是缘远不够的。
“我们需要一场新的革命使我们远离官场文化。我们必须学会去奖励真正的创新、独立的思考以及真实的学术作品”，他说。
The New York Times
October 28, 2005
China Luring Foreign Scholars to Make Its Universities Great
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
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 transxxxx 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 xxxxutive 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 transxxxx 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 perxxxxs 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 xxxxer 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 xxxxer 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."
October 28, 2005
China Luring Foreign Scholars to Make Its Universities Great
2004年，被公认为美国最顶尖计算机专家之一的普林斯顿大学教授姚期智（Andrew Chi-Chih Yao）在受到清华大学邀请其前往中国主持一个计算机学科项目时，他丝毫没有犹豫，欣然前往。
他似乎对要离开美国最顶级的大学前往一个在中国以外并不出名的大学并不在乎。出生在上海，姚期智在台湾长大，而他的整个学术生涯都是在美国渡过的。他觉得，他可以为飞速发展的家乡作出一些贡献。
“我想这和爱国有关，因为我不可以想象去其他地方，如果条件设备基本相同”，58岁的姚期智说。
纽约时报10月28日发表文章表示，在十年内，中国政府希望将其顶级大学变成世界级的大学，所以中国花费数十亿美元来吸引像姚一样的明星学者和建立世界级的研究实验室，而这些努力是中国提升国家竞争力及国际形像的又一表现。
中国已经开始推动现代史上最为世人所瞩目的教育扩张计划，十年间，大学本科生和博士生数量猛增了5倍。
“一流的大学可以反映一个国家的综合实力”，中共人大常委委员长吴邦国在庆祝上海复旦大学建校100周年典礼上说。
中国建立一流大学的模式很简单：聘用在国外受过教育的顶级中国学者和华裔专家，建立具有一流设备的实验室，然后吸引最优秀的学生以及给他们充分的空间发展。有些教授学者将得到美国式的待遇，有些则被相对较低的生活费用、慷慨的住房条件和优良的实验室设备所吸引，但到底多少学者教授会因此回到中国仍然未知。
中国将重点放在科学技术相关的科研项目，这从另一个角度反映了政府当局对言论自由的控制。人文学科通常会涉及对政治、经济和历史的尖锐思考，而严格控制公众言论的中国政府很明显不愿意在这些领域去争取国际级的地位。
事实上，中国学术界及媒体都曾委婉或间接地表示，对学术自由讨论的限制实际上阻扰了中国建成世界级的大学。
“现在而言，我不认为中国的任何大学拥有可以与西方老牌名校一样自由的学术氛围，比如哈佛大学和牛津大学。我们正在努力给学生提供尽可能好的氛围，但是就学术自由气氛而言，我们需要时间，不是10年，也许是一代人或者两代人的努力”，北京大学副校长林建华说。
然而，进入世界级精英教育强国行列的自信在政治家、大学管理者、学生和教授的言谈举止中随处可见。
“也许在20年内，清华大学将成为麻省理工(MIT)的学习榜样。我们需要多久时间赶上西方一流大学仍不确定，但是在一些方面我们已经做的比哈佛大学要好了”，分子生物物理与结构生物学专家清华大学教授饶子和说。
仅仅用了一代人的时间，中国接受过高等教育的人数比例急速增加，从1978年的1.4%增至现在的20%。仅工程学，中国现在一年培养442，000名本科生，48，000名研究生和8000名博士生。
但是，只有北京大学在内为数不多的几所大学在国际上享有崇高的声誉。从1998年以来，当时的中国领导人江泽民开始推动中国大学的改革，而高等院校的政府拨款增加了2倍，2003年达到104亿美元。
在耶鲁大学接受过教育的遗传学专家许田(Xu Tian)在复旦大学负责建立和运作一个实验室，从事基因转移方面的创新性研究。2005年8月15日，他因在其研究上的突破成为首位登上了业界权威杂志“细胞”(Cell)封面的中国人。
北京大学将麻省理工着名数学家田刚招至旗下成立一个具有世界级的数学研究中心。北京大学的官员表示，大约40%的北京大学教授是在国外接受的教育，其中大多数是在美国。
耶鲁大学校长雷文(Richard C. Levin) 9月作为贵宾在参加上海复旦大学校庆时对中国学生的素质赞赏有加。
“中国人口占世界20%，所以可以说中国拥有世界20%最优秀的学生。他们很有天分。”，他说。
但是，雷文同时表示中国廉价的劳动力价格使中国大学硬件升级速度变得很简单。他表示，他对上海交通大学新实验室的数量感到震惊，在中国实验室一平方米的价格是50美元，而在耶鲁是500美元。
一些批评家表示，中国大学存在重复建设的现象，建设30所一流大学的计划实际上是造成了投资上的浪费，以牺牲优秀大学为代价。甚至雷文也警告，中国顶级大学扩张速度太快，质量因此将受到影响。而多数情况下，最严厉的批评来自工作于系统内部的人。
“就像一个交响乐团，不同的学校应有不同的强项，这是非常重要的。但是所有中国大学都想成为综合性大学，都想拥有医学院和众多的研究生，这就像乐队里每个人都想弹钢琴”，复旦大学前校长核物理学家杨福家说。
现在宁波管理一家实验性大学的杨福家同时批评中国的科研工作者缺少自主权。
“在普林斯顿大学，一个数学家可以工作9年来解决一个存在360年的问题而不需要发表一篇论文，没人会介意，因为他们尊重对科学的执着。但在中国，我们没有这种精神”，杨以数学家怀尔斯(Andrew J. Wiles)破解费尔马最后定理为例。
同样，复旦大学历史地理学教授葛剑雄表示，中国文化很浮躁，对科学研究很不利。“中国的科研项目通常是短期的，比如三年时间，然后便会有人要求你出版着作，而且越长越好。而真正的科研应该给人充分的自由来出成就，而不仅仅只是个结果”，他说。葛剑雄同时表示，大学教育的浮躁是因为教育长期以来被当作一种政治的工具。
姚期智表示，他期望能够集中精力建成世界级的博士学位项目，但却发现本科教育存在令人吃惊的缺陷，所以不得不从本科阶段着手。“你不能说，我们只做高端的科研，实际上，你首先必须将最基本的知识传授地很好”，他说。
但是，许多中国学者表示，中国大学教育最大的缺陷是缺乏学术自由。复旦大学前校长杨福家警告，如果一个好的学术气氛不能被培养，即便海外优秀的学者愿意回来，也会在一年或两年内失望地离去。
清华大学副校长龚克表示，大学有职责去保障学术的自由。
“我们有些海外归来的教授的教学方法在中国政府看来是非常习惯的，其中一些教授甚至批评中国的经济政策”，他说。
台湾作家李敖今年9月访问中国大陆在北京大学演讲呼吁中国政府允许更多的学术自由。但据说是因为屈服于来自官方的压力，李敖在别处同样的演讲不得不变得更为婉转。
中国政府最近更是阻止广州中山大学的学生与香港来访的官员自由交谈。
在中国，学生不鼓励去挑战权威，这在某种程度上解释了中国为什么至今没有获得诺贝尔奖。一些中国学者表示，现在中国最缺的就是敢言的思想家。
“在过去的20年里，我们所做最伟大的事情就是让2亿人口脱离贫困，但是，中国必须意识到，中国如果想再提升一个水平，就必须明白光是有数量是缘远不够的。
“我们需要一场新的革命使我们远离官场文化。我们必须学会去奖励真正的创新、独立的思考以及真实的学术作品”，他说。
The New York Times
October 28, 2005
China Luring Foreign Scholars to Make Its Universities Great
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
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 transxxxx 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 xxxxutive 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 transxxxx 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 perxxxxs 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 xxxxer 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 xxxxer 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."The New York Times
October 28, 2005
China Luring Foreign Scholars to Make Its Universities Great
2004年，被公认为美国最顶尖计算机专家之一的普林斯顿大学教授姚期智（Andrew Chi-Chih Yao）在受到清华大学邀请其前往中国主持一个计算机学科项目时，他丝毫没有犹豫，欣然前往。
他似乎对要离开美国最顶级的大学前往一个在中国以外并不出名的大学并不在乎。出生在上海，姚期智在台湾长大，而他的整个学术生涯都是在美国渡过的。他觉得，他可以为飞速发展的家乡作出一些贡献。
“我想这和爱国有关，因为我不可以想象去其他地方，如果条件设备基本相同”，58岁的姚期智说。
纽约时报10月28日发表文章表示，在十年内，中国政府希望将其顶级大学变成世界级的大学，所以中国花费数十亿美元来吸引像姚一样的明星学者和建立世界级的研究实验室，而这些努力是中国提升国家竞争力及国际形像的又一表现。
中国已经开始推动现代史上最为世人所瞩目的教育扩张计划，十年间，大学本科生和博士生数量猛增了5倍。
“一流的大学可以反映一个国家的综合实力”，中共人大常委委员长吴邦国在庆祝上海复旦大学建校100周年典礼上说。
中国建立一流大学的模式很简单：聘用在国外受过教育的顶级中国学者和华裔专家，建立具有一流设备的实验室，然后吸引最优秀的学生以及给他们充分的空间发展。有些教授学者将得到美国式的待遇，有些则被相对较低的生活费用、慷慨的住房条件和优良的实验室设备所吸引，但到底多少学者教授会因此回到中国仍然未知。
中国将重点放在科学技术相关的科研项目，这从另一个角度反映了政府当局对言论自由的控制。人文学科通常会涉及对政治、经济和历史的尖锐思考，而严格控制公众言论的中国政府很明显不愿意在这些领域去争取国际级的地位。
事实上，中国学术界及媒体都曾委婉或间接地表示，对学术自由讨论的限制实际上阻扰了中国建成世界级的大学。
“现在而言，我不认为中国的任何大学拥有可以与西方老牌名校一样自由的学术氛围，比如哈佛大学和牛津大学。我们正在努力给学生提供尽可能好的氛围，但是就学术自由气氛而言，我们需要时间，不是10年，也许是一代人或者两代人的努力”，北京大学副校长林建华说。
然而，进入世界级精英教育强国行列的自信在政治家、大学管理者、学生和教授的言谈举止中随处可见。
“也许在20年内，清华大学将成为麻省理工(MIT)的学习榜样。我们需要多久时间赶上西方一流大学仍不确定，但是在一些方面我们已经做的比哈佛大学要好了”，分子生物物理与结构生物学专家清华大学教授饶子和说。
仅仅用了一代人的时间，中国接受过高等教育的人数比例急速增加，从1978年的1.4%增至现在的20%。仅工程学，中国现在一年培养442，000名本科生，48，000名研究生和8000名博士生。
但是，只有北京大学在内为数不多的几所大学在国际上享有崇高的声誉。从1998年以来，当时的中国领导人江泽民开始推动中国大学的改革，而高等院校的政府拨款增加了2倍，2003年达到104亿美元。
在耶鲁大学接受过教育的遗传学专家许田(Xu Tian)在复旦大学负责建立和运作一个实验室，从事基因转移方面的创新性研究。2005年8月15日，他因在其研究上的突破成为首位登上了业界权威杂志“细胞”(Cell)封面的中国人。
北京大学将麻省理工着名数学家田刚招至旗下成立一个具有世界级的数学研究中心。北京大学的官员表示，大约40%的北京大学教授是在国外接受的教育，其中大多数是在美国。
耶鲁大学校长雷文(Richard C. Levin) 9月作为贵宾在参加上海复旦大学校庆时对中国学生的素质赞赏有加。
“中国人口占世界20%，所以可以说中国拥有世界20%最优秀的学生。他们很有天分。”，他说。
但是，雷文同时表示中国廉价的劳动力价格使中国大学硬件升级速度变得很简单。他表示，他对上海交通大学新实验室的数量感到震惊，在中国实验室一平方米的价格是50美元，而在耶鲁是500美元。
一些批评家表示，中国大学存在重复建设的现象，建设30所一流大学的计划实际上是造成了投资上的浪费，以牺牲优秀大学为代价。甚至雷文也警告，中国顶级大学扩张速度太快，质量因此将受到影响。而多数情况下，最严厉的批评来自工作于系统内部的人。
“就像一个交响乐团，不同的学校应有不同的强项，这是非常重要的。但是所有中国大学都想成为综合性大学，都想拥有医学院和众多的研究生，这就像乐队里每个人都想弹钢琴”，复旦大学前校长核物理学家杨福家说。
现在宁波管理一家实验性大学的杨福家同时批评中国的科研工作者缺少自主权。
“在普林斯顿大学，一个数学家可以工作9年来解决一个存在360年的问题而不需要发表一篇论文，没人会介意，因为他们尊重对科学的执着。但在中国，我们没有这种精神”，杨以数学家怀尔斯(Andrew J. Wiles)破解费尔马最后定理为例。
同样，复旦大学历史地理学教授葛剑雄表示，中国文化很浮躁，对科学研究很不利。“中国的科研项目通常是短期的，比如三年时间，然后便会有人要求你出版着作，而且越长越好。而真正的科研应该给人充分的自由来出成就，而不仅仅只是个结果”，他说。葛剑雄同时表示，大学教育的浮躁是因为教育长期以来被当作一种政治的工具。
姚期智表示，他期望能够集中精力建成世界级的博士学位项目，但却发现本科教育存在令人吃惊的缺陷，所以不得不从本科阶段着手。“你不能说，我们只做高端的科研，实际上，你首先必须将最基本的知识传授地很好”，他说。
但是，许多中国学者表示，中国大学教育最大的缺陷是缺乏学术自由。复旦大学前校长杨福家警告，如果一个好的学术气氛不能被培养，即便海外优秀的学者愿意回来，也会在一年或两年内失望地离去。
清华大学副校长龚克表示，大学有职责去保障学术的自由。
“我们有些海外归来的教授的教学方法在中国政府看来是非常习惯的，其中一些教授甚至批评中国的经济政策”，他说。
台湾作家李敖今年9月访问中国大陆在北京大学演讲呼吁中国政府允许更多的学术自由。但据说是因为屈服于来自官方的压力，李敖在别处同样的演讲不得不变得更为婉转。
中国政府最近更是阻止广州中山大学的学生与香港来访的官员自由交谈。
在中国，学生不鼓励去挑战权威，这在某种程度上解释了中国为什么至今没有获得诺贝尔奖。一些中国学者表示，现在中国最缺的就是敢言的思想家。
“在过去的20年里，我们所做最伟大的事情就是让2亿人口脱离贫困，但是，中国必须意识到，中国如果想再提升一个水平，就必须明白光是有数量是缘远不够的。
“我们需要一场新的革命使我们远离官场文化。我们必须学会去奖励真正的创新、独立的思考以及真实的学术作品”，他说。
The New York Times
October 28, 2005
China Luring Foreign Scholars to Make Its Universities Great
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
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 transxxxx 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 xxxxutive 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 transxxxx 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 perxxxxs 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 xxxxer 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 xxxxer 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."
<P>我说那些皮包公司请大人物一请一个准列`~挨~~~~</P>
<P>切 </P>
幸好有洋文，不然我都看不明白啥意思啊
楼上去过蛮子地 还懂蛮文啊
做梦~~~~
俺国的学术已经不仅仅是浮躁了，已经腐败了，不是引进顶级专家就可以解决的