Today we are the second largest country in the world in terms of GDP, but as a country we rank outside the top 20 in terms of technological innovation and the ability to innovate in basic research.
Some people may be skeptical and think that I am wrong, saying that we have been to the sky and the moon and the sea to catch turtles, so how can we not be innovative enough, and we have high-speed railways all over the motherland, so how can we be ranked outside of the 20th place in terms of scientific and technological strength.
What I want to say is that the indicators and phenomena you see are determined by economic strength, not scientific and technological strength. What advantage do we have? We have the advantage of economic volume.
When I was overseas, whenever someone said something bad about my Motherland, I would fight tooth and nail to argue because I felt that I was very patriotic.
In April, I received an award at the annual meeting of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. At the dinner party, I chatted with a renowned Swedish professor about China’s technological development, and he was very dismissive. I felt very aggrieved and indignant, but I said lightly No matter what, our country’s moon landing has already been realized, where are you? But he said something back that left me speechless.
He said Prof. Shi, if we had the economic volume of your China, we could send 500 men to the moon and back safely.
At home, I feel like a critic because it’s hard to tolerate our own failure to think in safety. We should have a clear understanding of our country’s scientific and technological strength and current situation, how to develop and what to do, and form a certain consensus, rather than just staying at the level of arguing to and fro.
First of all, I would like to say that the university is the core. The first point I want to make is that research universities are never employment-oriented and should never talk about employment in the university. Employment is only an outlet. When a university is well run, it will naturally be employed, so how can it be run with employment in mind.
Employment is an economic issue, China’s economy to a certain extent will provide a number of employment, and has no direct relationship with the university.
Universities, especially research universities, are the place to train talents, the place to train the pillars and leaders of the country. What will be the result of letting students go in and want to be employed? That is, people will desperately go into areas where they can earn more money.
Where do the 70 to 80 top students of Tsinghua University go? To the School of Economics and Management. Even my best students, the ones I want to train the most, told me, “Teacher, I want to go to a financial company.
It’s not that finance can’t be innovative, but when all the elites in this country want to go into finance, I think something has gone terribly wrong.
Management is very hot in Tsinghua University, Peking University, and in the whole of China, which is against the law of education. The idea of running a specialized school is to cultivate professional talents and deliver screws for the industry, but the university is a place to cultivate talents for everyone and to cultivate elites and leaders of various industries in the country, which should not be confused.
Learning does not lead to utilization. You have heard it right, we used to emphasize too much on learning for use. When I was in college, I thought that there was no point in taking a certain course, so I didn’t need to take it. In fact, studying in college, especially undergraduate study, was never meant to be used.
But this does not mean that it can not be used, because you can not predict the future, whether it is scientific development or technological innovation, you can not predict, this can not be predicted will always happen first, you predict it is not called innovation.
There is a big problem with orientation in universities, so what to do? In fact, it is very simple, university diversification, do not one-size-fits-all, do not every school employment guidance, every school with employment this indicator assessment, which is a serious interference in the university.
I also have a view on basic research. Our country puts great emphasis on the transformation of results, and the most common saying now is to strengthen transformation. But I would like to ask: Where does the transformation come from?
Is it because our universities have a lot of high technologies that have not been transformed into productivity, or do we simply not have these high technologies? I think it is the latter. Our universities are now so poor in basic research that they cannot be transformed. It is not that there is a lack of transformation, but that there is nothing that can be transformed.
When a university professor has a result, no matter how basic the invention is, as long as there is a prospect of application and the possibility of industrial transformation, there will be multinational companies flocking to the university, and I am an example.
Fourteen or fifteen years ago, a simple discovery that even I didn’t realize was being targeted by a company that came forward. These companies are like those anti-drug dogs who keep sniffing, watching and listening, they are so sensitive that they cannot miss a meaningful discovery.
What was the last straw that broke the camel’s back? It is to encourage scientists to set up enterprises. Members have heard it correctly. I felt a heavy heart after hearing this at the NPC meeting this year.
I only know my basic research and a little bit about education. If you ask me to do business management and run a company and become its president, you are putting my talent and wisdom in the wrong place. It is impossible for a person to be a university professor, a manager of a company and in charge of finance at the same time.
We should encourage scientific and technological personnel to transfer their achievements and patents to enterprises, and they can participate in the form of consultancy and scientific adviser, but it would be putting the cart before the horse if they are allowed to come out and run their own enterprises.
I can cite an example. Joseph Leonard Goldstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1985 for his discovery of the LDL receptor which regulates the metabolism of cholesterol in blood and cells. He is the person behind the scenes controlling many big corporations in the United States, including Pfizer, which is now very rich, and I should say that he is the one who emphasizes transformation the most.
He wrote an article in Science Weekly two years ago, attacking the special emphasis on translation. He said that translation comes from basic research, and when there is no strong basic research, how can it be translated.
He said that when he realized how important basic research was, he just went ahead and did the basic research and the translation came. When the research results are there, the natural translation is very fast and there is no need to pull the plug.
He cited his time at the National Center for Health Research in the United States, where it was nine medical students who did basic research that changed the history of medical and pharmaceuticals in the United States.
We must look at history, not only the history of modern China, but also the history of scientific development, to see how the powerful places of various countries have come into being, rather than plucking up seedlings as a matter of course.
The cultivation of innovative talents is also related to our cultural atmosphere. The same problem exists when one wants to innovate. What is innovation? Innovation is being a minority, it is being controversial.
Three years ago, after I won an award from Israel, I was invited to the Israeli Embassy for a celebration reception. During the reception, Mr. Ambassador talked to me about how Israelis value education, and I talked to him about how Chinese people also value education. He looked at me with a smile and said, “Your way of education is different from ours.
He gave me the example of former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, saying that when he was in elementary school, his mother would only ask him two questions when he came home every day: first, did you ask a question at school today that the teacher couldn’t answer; and second, did you do something today that impressed the teacher and your classmates?
I sighed when I heard this and said, “I have to admit, when my two children came home every day, the first thing I asked them was, “Did you listen to the teacher today?
But I would like to say that I am not pessimistic. In fact, I am very optimistic, and I encourage myself every day that our country has a bright future, especially in the past two years, and I can really see hope. The tide is really starting to turn with deep thinking and change now, both in the political arena and in the educational arena.
In such a great tide, it is enough for each of us to do one thing well. Speaking truthfully and doing our part in our own field is our contribution. In this way, our country will have a great future.
What are we missing?
I was born in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, but grew up in Zhumadian, Henan Province. Why do I mention Zhumadian in particular? Because this place is particularly representative.
Zhumadian is to Henan as Henan is to China as China is to the world. Geographically, economically, technologically, and culturally. I happened to grow up in Zhumadian at a time when I started to have memories and feelings about society.
When I was a junior high school student in Zhumadian, my elementary school teacher said to me: “Shi Yigong, when you grow up, you have to make Zhumadian people proud”.
You may not realize that this very simple sentence is engraved in my memory to this day. Since then, every time I get any honor, I will feel in my heart that I am competing for Zhumadian people.
Today, I also want to say Hello, Teacher! I’m still fighting for our Zhumadian honor. I went to Zhengzhou for middle school and Tsinghua University for college. I’m often homesick for my folks in Zhumadian, and I can’t stop thinking about what kind of life my folks are leading. What kind of life are they leading?
An incident in 1987 had a great impact on me, and almost completely disrupted my life and worldview. Before that, although I had received a traditional education, and although my father had told me to be a scientist and engineer, I did not know what I wanted to be and what I could do in the future.
On September 21, 1987, my father was hit by a fatigued cab on a bicycle path. When the driver took my father to Henan Provincial People’s Hospital, he was still in a coma, with a heart rate of 62 beats per minute and a blood pressure of 130 80. But he lay in the hospital’s emergency room for four and a half hours without any help. Because the hospital said that they needed to pay first before they could save him.
By the time the driver of the accident came back with 500 dollars, my father had no blood pressure and no heartbeat, and he died in the emergency room of the hospital without receiving any treatment. This incident had a great impact on me, and to this day, I can’t stop thinking about my father when it’s quiet at night.
This incident made me change my view of society fundamentally. I used to resent and want to take revenge on the hospital and the doctor on duty in the emergency room for not saving my father’s life.
But then I figured it out, I really figured it out. China is such a big country, so many people, I don’t know how many people, how many families are experiencing the same tragedy as my father. If I really have ambition and commitment, then I should go and change society so that tragedies like this don’t happen again so that more people can have a better life.
On the Qingming Festival in 2012, I went back to Zhumadian to attend an elementary school reunion and was very emotional. Two of my classmates were no longer with us, one suffering from cardiovascular disease and the other from cancer. There was another classmate who was undergoing chemotherapy for terminal cancer and is also gone now.
I often think to myself, “I am so lucky to have no worries about food and clothing, and to have received a higher education. I have traveled abroad, studied abroad, and have a job that I love, but there are many people in China who are not as lucky as I am.
My folks and their children are not as lucky as I am. Even though they are not as lucky as I am, they have always been very proud of me and they cheer me on.
There’s something about me that’s different from a lot of obsessive scientists. What’s different? They’re doing science because they’re driven by an interest. I have an interest, but I didn’t initially have a strong interest in doing research; my interest was developed very late in life, and I was driven more by duty and obligation.
I grew up in Zhumadian, and I am a native of Zhumadian, and my neighbors and townspeople there have never treated me as an outsider, and this kind of affection often touches me. I want to use their own efforts and create a return to my folks, even if it is to achieve results to make them proud of me. This is what I have been taught since I was a child, and I am really grateful and want to give back.
Yet without realizing it, my concepts seem to be very outdated. I can’t figure out why today’s society has become so materialistic and why so many people are united in looking towards money.
People are not commodities; they live for one breath. When college graduates take income as their only measure, and price themselves out of employment by choosing companies that offer slightly more, I really don’t understand it, and the world around them becomes strange.
I sometimes wonder if the world is changing so fast that I really can’t keep up with it in my old age. I don’t understand how, even the people around me, even some of my colleagues, classmates and friends, I can’t understand. I don’t know what’s wrong with this society, our focus is so incredibly narrow.
There are many people in China who are not as lucky as we are, and they need our help. We need everyone who is lucky to be here to pay attention to their living environment, and we need to work together with the people here today.
I don’t want my students to become formalized social practices, but I do support them in choosing underdeveloped areas of China to see and experience, such as going to teach and so on!
Let me give you an example of teaching: In 2008, when I was working full-time at Tsinghua, one of my undergraduate students returned from teaching at a Hope Primary School in rural Shaanxi.
In my office, he cried bitterly. He said: “Mr. Shi, do you know that even though it’s a Hope Primary School, the children there, from the first grade to the fifth grade, are very skinny, and they only have two meals a day, one at 10:00 in the morning and one at 4:00 in the afternoon.
Why? They have no money!
They don’t have meat to eat, and they only get two full meals. They can’t get up too early in the morning and they have to go to bed as early as possible at night. This is because they have to conserve their energy and use it in class time between 10 am and 4 pm.
But they’re all content and happy.
I don’t know, we who do basic research, what we can do, what we can change. I am deeply educated by Chinese tradition, as a daring reader, not only should the sound of the wind and the rain and the sound of reading be heard, but also need to be concerned about family affairs, national affairs, and world affairs.
It is a pity that their time and energy is too limited, always want to find some like-minded friends to do something, always want to have the opportunity to go home to the folks to do something. I am quite ashamed, in fact, I did not take good care of my mother, nor did I take good care of my wife and children.
What are we missing? We lack this sense of responsibility to society, we lack the action to return to the folks.
At Tsinghua University, every time I gave the freshmen of the School of Life Sciences an entrance education, I told them that
Don’t forget that when you come to Tsinghua University, you are not only representing yourself, but also representing a village, a county, a region, a group of people and a nation. Don’t forget that you have taken this responsibility on your shoulders.
I really hope that, whether it’s myself, my students, or my fellow students, each of us really has to take a little bit of social responsibility, and do a little bit of duty for those who are not as fortunate as we are, and for the villagers.
That’s all that motivates me besides my interest in science itself, and it’s the most important bit of support I have going forward.
From Shi Yigong’s speech at the 2014 graduation ceremony of the School of Life at Tsinghua University
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