Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [153]
Meanwhile, at the highest levels of education, China is still reeling from the Cultural Revolution, when forty years ago the country's most gifted and accomplished scientists, researchers, and academics were sent to the countryside to work as field hands— not only a colossal human tragedy and waste of talent but a crippling setback for China's scientific and technological sectors. As of 2000, China had only about 460 scientists and engineers involved in research and development for every 1 million people, whereas in the United States the ratio is roughly ten times higher.10
To upgrade its “humanware,” as one Chinese official puts it, the Chinese government is devoting massive resources to improving education, with a special emphasis on originality and innovation. Today, some 25 percent of China's student population attend “experimental” primary and secondary schools, designed to encourage debate, “scientific exploration,” and “flexible thinking.” And in a bizarre alliance, the Disney Corporation recently teamed up with the Communist Youth League to hold workshops aimed at “raising creativity”—with the additional benefit of familiarizing the Chinese market with Disney characters.
At the same time, China has been sending growing numbers of promising young scientists and scholars to study abroad. Known as haigui, or “overseas returnees,” these students were to bring back valuable know-how and to serve as the vanguard of China's technological revolution. (The Chinese word for “turtle” is also pronounced haigui—a source of wordplay among Chinese and a frequent mistranslation in English.) Instead of doing so, however, the great majority of these students chose to remain abroad after obtaining their degrees. From 1986 to 1998, for example, some 85 percent of Chinese students graduating from American universities said they planned to stay in the United States.”
But this trend may be changing dramatically. In the last five years, as China's standard of living continues to rise, increasing numbers of foreign-educated Chinese are returning to the People's Republic.12 These prize engineers and scientists are often lured back to China with Western-style perks: luxury cars, state-of-the-art condos, and internationally competitive salaries. Many, moreover, are moved by patriotism. The possibility of China's becoming a world superpower fills them with pride and motivation—once again, Chinese ethnonationalism at work.
Nevertheless, although China's economy has opened considerably, there remains a strong popular perception that hard work and intelligence will not produce commensurate rewards. Shanghai may have a new crop of Prada-wearing real estate moguls, but because corruption in China remains rife, connections continue to be of critical importance. As long as this continues to be the case, China's best and brightest may not want to stay in (or return to) the country. They will try to go where their talents can translate more directly into success.
But even if China makes great strides in harnessing the energies and talents of its vast population, it is still exceedingly unlikely that this would put China at the cutting edge of the human talent frontier. Why? Because the Western nations have a massive head start. And more fundamentally, because at any given point in time the world's most brilliant, most inventive, most skilled, and most enterprising will never all be found in one locale or among one ethnicity. This, of course, is the thesis of this book: To achieve not regional but world dominance, a society must attract, command the loyalty of, and motivate the world's most valuable human capital.
Can China do this?
There is now a surprising number of Americans and other Westerners working as bartenders and fitness instructors in Shanghai. But attracting relatively unskilled foreigners probably isn't going to be China's ticket to world dominance.