Which country -- the United States or China -- will make the 21st century its own? When President Obama recently called for American young people "to be makers of things" and focus on subjects such as science and engineering, it was partly a nod to China's rapid growth. Had he lived, taught and consulted in China for the last 33 months, as I have, he might have urged American students first to follow his example and study the liberal arts. Only technical knowledge complemented by well-honed critical and creative thinking skills can help us regain our innovative edge. China's traditional lack of emphasis on teaching these skills could undermine its efforts to develop its own innovative economy.
Ironically, the government that has enforced such restrictions and focused its schools so intensely on math and science seems to realize its efforts may be too effective. Highways, dams, bridges and airports have been built, every conceivable product manufactured and sold, but so few sophisticated marketing and management minds have been cultivated that it will be a long time before most people in the world can name a Chinese brand.
With this problem in mind, local partnerships with institutions such as USC, Johns Hopkins, Yale, MIT and Insead of France have been established. If not quite ready to create cadres of disaffected litterateurs and cineastes, Beijing clearly recognizes it will take different kinds of thinkers to invent new products and sell them around the world.
Ultimately for China, becoming a major world innovator -- and by extension, a robust economic power -- is not just about setting up partnerships with top Western universities or roping off elites and telling them to think creatively. It's about establishing an intellectually rich learning environment for young minds. It's about harnessing the same inventive energy of the street markets and small-time entrepreneurs and putting it in the schools. (Randy Pollock, Los Angeles Times)
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