Probably the best thing China could do was done this week, with the announcement of free schooling for university students.
One wonders just how many geniuses there are in a population of 1.3bn, but the government of country with such a huge reservoir of brainpower, should make it a priority to put in mechanisms to identify the geniuses.
When the UK dominated the world in the 19th century, it was not only because of the redcoats, but because the UK led in science and technology. And it led in those because of individual geniuses who transformed technologies and industrial sectors.
There is no regional monopoly on human genius. China must have thousands of geniuses. Their ideas should already be transforming science and technology.
Chinese engineers have made enormous contributions to technology advance, but usually in places like Silicon Valley, rather than in China. That benefits Silicon Valley a lot, but it doesn't benefit China.
The country is now on a mission to improve wages. It needs doing. The average wage is Yuan 14,000 (US$1,800).
One way the China government is doing this is creating urban jobs for rural people. It is currently creating 45m of them.
But this is low value added stuff. The real prosperity is going to come from innovation and invention, and that can only come, on a lasting and sustainable basis, from recognizing and nurturing its greatest resource, the genius of its people.
There can be no greater waste than undiscovered genius.
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Comments (2)
To get into a university is already very difficult even for urban Chinese; a rural student almost has no chance. If there are genius's working in the fields in China they will never have the opportunity to "train their brains" as they will be working in some field instead.
The vast majority of Chinese are not it the affluent coast. They are used as essentially as poorly paid slave labor to subsidize the costs of manufacturing and local services to more well off Chinese. This is seen as the norm as China is not at all like North America, the rural people are looked down upon are expected to serve the affluent. Unless fundamental shift in the Chinese culture changes to respect individual freedoms things won't change. With the present oligarchy / pseudo-communism government at the moment this has no chance of happening as the government depends on it to keep the economy rolling.
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Posted by Thomas MacArthur | March 9, 2007 11:57 PM
Posted on March 9, 2007 23:57
What you say makes it all the more important for China to recognise that it's losing the use of its greatest resource, exceptional brainpower, by not having in place adequate mechanisms to identify it.
Posted by david manners | March 11, 2007 2:35 PM
Posted on March 11, 2007 14:35