The New York Times
October 28, 2005
China Luring Foreign Scholars to Make Its Universities Great

2004年，被公認為美國最頂尖計算機專家之一的普林斯頓大學教授姚期智（Andrew Chi-Chih Yao）在受到清華大學邀請其前往中國主持一個計算機學科項目時，他絲毫沒有猶豫，欣然前往。

他似乎對要離開美國最頂級的大學前往一個在中國以外並不出名的大學並不在乎。出生在上海，姚期智在台灣長大，而他的整個學術生涯都是在美國渡過的。他覺得，他可以為飛速發展的家鄉作出一些貢獻。

“我想這和愛國有關，因為我不可以想象去其他地方，如果條件設備基本相同”，58歲的姚期智說。

紐約時報10月28日發表文章表示，在十年內，中國政府希望將其頂級大學變成世界級的大學，所以中國花費數十億美元來吸引像姚一樣的明星學者和建立世界級的研究實驗室，而這些努力是中國提升國家競爭力及國際形像的又一表現。

中國已經開始推動現代史上最為世人所矚目的教育擴張計劃，十年間，大學本科生和博士生數量猛增了5倍。

“一流的大學可以反映一個國家的綜合實力”，中共人大常委委員長吳邦國在慶祝上海復旦大學建校100周年典禮上說。

中國建立一流大學的模式很簡單：聘用在國外受過教育的頂級中國學者和華裔專家，建立具有一流設備的實驗室，然後吸引最優秀的學生以及給他們充分的空間發展。有些教授學者將得到美國式的待遇，有些則被相對較低的生活費用、慷慨的住房條件和優良的實驗室設備所吸引，但到底多少學者教授會因此回到中國仍然未知。

中國將重點放在科學技術相關的科研項目，這從另一個角度反映了政府當局對言論自由的控制。人文學科通常會涉及對政治、經濟和歷史的尖銳思考，而嚴格控制公眾言論的中國政府很明顯不願意在這些領域去爭取國際級的地位。

事實上，中國學術界及媒體都曾委婉或間接地表示，對學術自由討論的限制實際上阻擾了中國建成世界級的大學。

“現在而言，我不認為中國的任何大學擁有可以與西方老牌名校一樣自由的學術氛圍，比如哈佛大學和牛津大學。我們正在努力給學生提供儘可能好的氛圍，但是就學術自由氣氛而言，我們需要時間，不是10年，也許是一代人或者兩代人的努力”，北京大學副校長林建華說。

然而，進入世界級精英教育強國行列的自信在政治家、大學管理者、學生和教授的言談舉止中隨處可見。

“也許在20年內，清華大學將成為麻省理工(MIT)的學習榜樣。我們需要多久時間趕上西方一流大學仍不確定，但是在一些方面我們已經做的比哈佛大學要好了”，分子生物物理與結構生物學專家清華大學教授饒子和說。

僅僅用了一代人的時間，中國接受過高等教育的人數比例急速增加，從1978年的1.4%增至現在的20%。僅工程學，中國現在一年培養442，000名本科生，48，000名研究生和8000名博士生。

但是，只有北京大學在內為數不多的幾所大學在國際上享有崇高的聲譽。從1998年以來，當時的中國領導人江澤民開始推動中國大學的改革，而高等院校的政府撥款增加了2倍，2003年達到104億美元。

在耶魯大學接受過教育的遺傳學專家許田(Xu Tian)在復旦大學負責建立和運作一個實驗室，從事基因轉移方面的創新性研究。2005年8月15日，他因在其研究上的突破成為首位登上了業界權威雜誌“細胞”(Cell)封面的中國人。

北京大學將麻省理工着名數學家田剛招至旗下成立一個具有世界級的數學研究中心。北京大學的官員表示，大約40%的北京大學教授是在國外接受的教育，其中大多數是在美國。

耶魯大學校長雷文(Richard C. Levin) 9月作為貴賓在參加上海復旦大學校慶時對中國學生的素質讚賞有加。

“中國人口占世界20%，所以可以說中國擁有世界20%最優秀的學生。他們很有天分。”，他說。

但是，雷文同時表示中國廉價的勞動力價格使中國大學硬件升級速度變得很簡單。他表示，他對上海交通大學新實驗室的數量感到震驚，在中國實驗室一平方米的價格是50美元，而在耶魯是500美元。

一些批評家表示，中國大學存在重複建設的現象，建設30所一流大學的計劃實際上是造成了投資上的浪費，以犧牲優秀大學為代價。甚至雷文也警告，中國頂級大學擴張速度太快，質量因此將受到影響。而多數情況下，最嚴厲的批評來自工作於系統內部的人。

“就像一個交響樂團，不同的學校應有不同的強項，這是非常重要的。但是所有中國大學都想成為綜合性大學，都想擁有醫學院和眾多的研究生，這就像樂隊裡每個人都想彈鋼琴”，復旦大學前校長核物理學家楊福家說。

現在寧波管理一家實驗性大學的楊福家同時批評中國的科研工作者缺少自主權。

“在普林斯頓大學，一個數學家可以工作9年來解決一個存在360年的問題而不需要發表一篇論文，沒人會介意，因為他們尊重對科學的執着。但在中國，我們沒有這種精神”，楊以數學家懷爾斯(Andrew J. Wiles)破解費爾馬最後定理為例。

同樣，復旦大學歷史地理學教授葛劍雄表示，中國文化很浮躁，對科學研究很不利。“中國的科研項目通常是短期的，比如三年時間，然後便會有人要求你出版着作，而且越長越好。而真正的科研應該給人充分的自由來出成就，而不僅僅只是個結果”，他說。葛劍雄同時表示，大學教育的浮躁是因為教育長期以來被當作一種政治的工具。

姚期智表示，他期望能夠集中精力建成世界級的博士學位項目，但卻發現本科教育存在令人吃驚的缺陷，所以不得不從本科階段着手。“你不能說，我們只做高端的科研，實際上，你首先必須將最基本的知識傳授地很好”，他說。

但是，許多中國學者表示，中國大學教育最大的缺陷是缺乏學術自由。復旦大學前校長楊福家警告，如果一個好的學術氣氛不能被培養，即便海外優秀的學者願意回來，也會在一年或兩年內失望地離去。

清華大學副校長龔克表示，大學有職責去保障學術的自由。

“我們有些海外歸來的教授的教學方法在中國政府看來是非常習慣的，其中一些教授甚至批評中國的經濟政策”，他說。

台灣作家李敖今年9月訪問中國大陸在北京大學演講呼籲中國政府允許更多的學術自由。但據說是因為屈服於來自官方的壓力，李敖在別處同樣的演講不得不變得更為婉轉。

中國政府最近更是阻止廣州中山大學的學生與香港來訪的官員自由交談。

在中國，學生不鼓勵去挑戰權威，這在某種程度上解釋了中國為什麼至今沒有獲得諾貝爾獎。一些中國學者表示，現在中國最缺的就是敢言的思想家。

“在過去的20年裡，我們所做最偉大的事情就是讓2億人口脫離貧困，但是，中國必須意識到，中國如果想再提升一個水平，就必須明白光是有數量是緣遠不夠的。

“我們需要一場新的革命使我們遠離官場文化。我們必須學會去獎勵真正的創新、獨立的思考以及真實的學術作品”，他說。

The New York Times
October 28, 2005
China Luring Foreign Scholars to Make Its Universities Great
By HOWARD W. FRENCH

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 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."