China Luring Scholars to Make Universities Great

[n2doc]

Yep we train them, then they go home and kick our butts scientifically....What a way to run a country.

link:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/international/asia/28universities.html?incamp=article_popular_3

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.

China wants to transform 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.

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.

"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."

[no_hypocrisy]

1. This, compared with the treatment of U.S. professors who often cannot

make ends meet, are offered and given no tenure, and have negligible respect in society.

[NNadir]

2. An increasing fraction of the world's most serious scholars are Chinese.

They don't have to check the bible to do research.