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| April 12, 2000 | atimes.com | ||
|  | China THE MIDDLE KINGDOM: Gimme a 'C'! Gimme an 'R'! . . . By Bradley Martin China's leadership these days is eager to foster creativity in its younger people, especially those headed for careers in scientific and technical work. But the leadership also has decided that it's time to mount a major, old-fashioned propaganda campaign, in which people - again, young people especially - are urged to parrot slogans and to emulate ''model workers'' and ''model soldiers'' as a means of toeing the party line. It's not hard to discern that the authorities have yet to smooth out all the rough spots in this attempt at what seems pretty much a marriage of opposites. The pitch for more creativity has come from, among other officials, Li Xueyong, Vice-Minister of Science and Technology. Within the developing world, Chinese scientific strength stands out, Li said in an address at the end of March to a Beijing conference on basic scientific research. But only about 5 percent of the country's basic scientific research is up to the standard of the advanced countries, Li lamented, according to an article by Xinhua's international service. That lag is due not only to funding problems but also to lack of creativity, he said. The stress will be on creativity during the decade of the '00s, Li assured his listeners, and that is expected to have paid off in research breakthroughs within five to 10 years. The goal is ''a scientific system with a creative spirit''. One way to foster the desired creativity, of course, is to provide plenty of research funds. Thus Chen Jia'er, director of the State Natural Science Fund Committee, was quoted by Xinhua's domestic service as saying the government would cough up more renminbi. ''Scientists' interests and spirit of innovation will be appreciated and encouraged,'' Chen said. He promised ''an open and relaxed funding environment for scientists''. The schools can also foster creativity, but there is grave concern over the extent to which they fail to do so. Too many rely instead on rote-learning requirements enforced by loads of homework and numerous exams. No less a figure than President Jiang Zemin has recently led the charge to change this. As Vice-Premier Li Lanqing put it recently: ''We should establish the principle of promoting an all-around development of morality, intelligence and physique; turn the exam-oriented education to a quality-oriented education; and give shape to a sound social environment that is favorable to the healthy physical and mental growth of our young students.'' (Also a member of the Standing Committee of the party Political Bureau, Li was addressing educator members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, according to Zhongguo Xinwen She, an official Beijing news service for overseas Chinese.) But officials are concerned that teachers in their zeal to follow the new party line will take things to extremes, completely or virtually eliminating homework and examinations. That would be tragically similar to what happened during the chaotic Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and '70s, when the country produced a generation of uneducated people who are now middle aged. ''What we want to reduce is the excessive and unnecessary burden on students,'' said a Xinhua domestic service commentary by Fei Qiang last month. ''We do not mean that students should not have any schoolwork burden.'' Spelling it out like that might seem unnecessary at first glance - but not after one has experienced the facility with which communist propagandists can reduce reasonable-sounding ideas to mindless slogans. As the personality cult around Jiang becomes ever more pronounced, officials are lining up these days to march into lecture halls and hear about the importance of his views on education, as set out in a speech he made recently in Guangdong Province. Jiang in that ''important speech'' talked not only about educational problems per se but about ''ideological work'' with students. With the ideological angle involved, you don't necessarily expect accounts of these meetings to record anything like a Socratic dialogue. Nevertheless it's remarkable how many articles about the sessions you can read and still not come away with a clear idea of what the president was talking about. Perhaps the worst example is a Xinhua domestic service article from Beijing, datelined March 4, that uses the term ''the 'three stresses' education'' to stand for Jiang's educational philosophy. It goes on an on about how much his ''three stresses'' speech inspired cadres. Trouble is, although the article mentions those ''three stresses'' no less than 17 times, it never defines just what three things Jiang might have stressed. We can guess. Are they ''morality, intelligence and physique''? Or perhaps ''Marxist materialism, atheism and scientific spirit'', another group of three terms currently hot in educational circles? But if you don't know already you won't find out from the article. Thus does educational jargon choke off thought, not to mention creativity. Never fear, though. There's always that old standby communist method of behavior modification: holding up model workers and soldiers for emulation. This column noted some weeks ago that Lei Feng, the totally selfless soldier who died decades ago (if he wasn't in fact a mythical creation in the first place, as cynics suspect) is back in the nation's propaganda service in a big way. The authorities think the people need to be steered away from corruption and from other me-first behavior that has flourished in the market economy. Lei may indeed be suited for that role. But Lei is most noted for the gesture (need we say Christlike?) of washing his colleagues' socks. So he doesn't quite fit the current need for a model to instill scientific and technological expertise, much less creativity. Fortunately Xu Guangfeng has appeared. A model officer in the Nanjing Military Area Command, Xu was called in for an audience with Chi Haotian, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, last month. According to Xinhua's account, Xu is ''noted for his devotion to high tech'', has ''acquired special knowledge in eight areas [doesn't say which eight] and compiled a significant amount of teaching material for the military over the past four years''. Gen Chen exhorted his underlings in the People's Liberation Army to ''put more efforts into encouraging people like Xu'', whom he called a ''rare talent''. Well, maybe emulation will in due course equate to creativity. But while we wait to see if it does, what were those ''three stresses'' again? (Special to Asia Times Online) | |||||||||
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