American's challenge is to balance the environment with development
Thursday, November 28, 2002
china.scmp.com
COX NEWS SERVICE
If the mainland is looking for one area in which it can beat the US, then Peking University is betting on the environment. And to better its chances, it is taking a gamble on an American.
C. S. Kiang, a physicist from the Georgia Institute of Technology who helped develop an environmental programme there, has been chosen to run the College of Environmental Sciences at China's most prestigious university. The college is the first of its kind on the mainland.
"One reason they wanted to set up this college is because [US President George W.] Bush has not emphasised the environment too much," he said. "If China does something big on the environment, it will be almost like a Sputnik."
The Soviet Union shocked the world, humbled the US and sparked the space race when it launched Sputnik in 1957.
Two decades of rapid development have not come cheaply, with annual flooding in the south and a severe chronic drought in the north. Mainland cities are some of the most polluted on the planet.
"This could all be the case in the future for developing countries, in South America, Africa, Southeast Asia," Professor Kiang said. "If China can solve these problems - balance the environment and development - they could be solved for the world."
Environmental degradation is one of the biggest factors threatening economic growth. Yet government officials have been slow to recognise that environmental issues must be dealt with proactively rather than reactively.
"The mindset is the most difficult to change," Professor Kiang said. Most believe "once you develop the economy, then you fix the environment".
Peking University decided to merge several departments and research centres to form the college, which officially opened in June. Professor Kiang hopes that the interdisciplinary approach will mean a more comprehensive look at China's environmental problems.
He also wants to emphasise innovation, a trait now lacking in China's manufacturing-oriented economy.
"Everything is made in China, but how many things come from China?" he said.
The government has allocated US$128 million (HK$995 million) to Peking University and Tsinghua University, the country's finest, during the past three years to make them competitive with the West's best schools.
Professor Kiang is the first foreign dean at Peking University.
"People say, 'You've got to have someone from Harvard, someone from Berkeley'. Rarely do they say, 'You've got to have someone from Georgia'," he said. "In that sense, Georgia Tech should feel pretty good."
Born in Shanghai and educated in Taiwan, Professor Kiang has lived in the US for 40 years, 35 of them in Atlanta. His wife runs the Kiang Gallery in Atlanta.
He has worked with Chinese scientists on studying the impact of industrialisation in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta.
As a company consultant, an academic and an adviser on Atlanta trade missions, he visited China more than 100 times. But he had never spent more than two weeks there before taking the job. |
