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Chen Ning Yang on Global Trend of Science and Technology
Chen Ning Yang, a Chinese American and world-famous Nobel Prize Laureate, gave a lecture on "Current Global Trend of Sci-tech Development and Counter Measures We Should Take" at the Guangzhou Xinhua Science and Technology Forum. He was invited as an honorary president for it and he happily accepted the offer.
In his lecture, he used the word "surprising" to describe China's development on science and technology in the 20th century. He said, many people held an utterly wrong view that China was backward in the development on science and technology during that period. He cited an example to refute the wrong view, saying that before the founding of the new China, the illiteracy rate in Hefei, where he was born, was at least over 95 percent of the population, while currently, there is almost no young illiterate in all the Chinese cities.
Aside from that China has succeeded in developing A-bomb within a timeframe of 15 years after the establishment of the new China, and then developed the H-bomb in another 32 months, whereas France spent eight years on it. Therefore, China has, so to speak, witnessed a booming period in the development of science and technology in the 20th century.
According to Prof. Yang, the globalization will be a ceaseless trend in the coming 30 years. The application of computers, communication industry, and biological engineering will be the driving force in the development of global economy. And with it there will be alterations of academic definitions with more subjects to come into the world and also it will incur some changes and new subjects to appear in the social, moral and economic fields.
He also made a comparison between Asian, especially Chinese, with American educational systems. American students have extensive interest, receive nonstandard studies, full of vigor and confidence but they are arrogant. While Chinese students study in a down-to-earth way in the limited subjects, modest, quiet but lack of confidence. To him, the two systems should learn from each other for the Chinese educational system is suitable for the great majority of students in China while American system is only fit for a few talented ones like Bill Gates.
Professor Chen Ning Yang was born in Hefei, Anhui Province of China in 1922. He graduated from the Southwest United University in 1942 and went to the University of Chicago to continue his study in 1945. He won the Nobel Physics Prize in 1957 for his great achievements in statistical physics, condensed matter physics, and particle physics.
By PD Online Staff Huang Ying
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