Nobel prize will encourage creativity of Chinese people
Updated: 2012-10-17 06:29
By Ho Chi-Ping(HK Edition)
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This year's Nobel Prize in Literature was given to Mo Yan, a renowned Chinese writer who was born and grew up in China and whose works are published and read in China. He was praised by the Swedish Academy for merging "folk tales, history, and the contemporary" with "hallucinatory realism".
Mo Yan is the first Chinese citizen to win a Nobel prize. Before him, several non-Chinese citizens with Chinese ethnicity became Nobel laureates. Gao Xingjian, for example, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000, was born in China but became a French citizen. Yang Zhenning, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957, was born in China but became a US citizen. These names are well-known in China's schools, newspapers and TV programs, but they only intensified the desire of the Chinese people for a winner of their own.
China did have winners of its own. But these winners, for some reason, could not get official recognition from Beijing. Their names were also unknown to many Chinese people.
This year is different. The country has finally witnessed an indigenous Chinese winning the most prestigious prize for literature in our time. The public desire for a Nobel prize that lasted for years in China has finally been satisfied.
Since the foundation of modern China in 1949, we have been waiting for the type of success that Mo Yan achieved. No one in China would like to wait for another 60 years to witness the emergence of a second Chinese Nobel laureate. We want to see more Nobel prizes won by Chinese people.
What does Mo Yan's prize mean for China?
From a study of the history of past and present powerful nations, it's clear that the sense of creativity is a necessary factor in the development of nations that evolved from being low-end players to leadership positions not just in literature and the arts, but in business, trade, and politics. The prize won by Mo Yan should not be treated as separate from China's overall future. China has to support more prize-winning efforts that can symbolize the creativity and innovative spirit of the Chinese people.
Some recent statistics on research and development in China, however, do not justify optimism. Although China's spending on research and development (R&D) last year surged by 21.9 percent year-on-year to 861 billion yuan ($139.7 billion), representing 1.83 percent of China's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2011, and although that number ranked third in the world, fundamental scientific and artistic research need a more consistent and substantial input.
China's appropriating resources to R&D does show its determination to produce further achievements in science and technology, but it should also be aware that human resources are as important as fiscal resources. Highly-advanced industrialized countries, like Japan and the US, have been spending more than 3 percent of their gross GDP on R&D for dozens of years. As a result, they have attracted thousands of talented people to reside in their countries each year. In this regard, China lags very much behind.
Finally, winning a Nobel prize may bring China prestige and fame for a short while. But for the long-term interest of the nation, the sense of creativity that the award symbolizes has to be nurtured in all fields of human endeavor - literary, artistic, technological, scientific, economic and social.
On this note, I'm proud to point out that the China Energy Fund Committee, our think-tank dedicated to promoting better understanding of issues relating to energy and Chinese culture and literature, has been doing its bit since its inception two years ago with regular exchanges with other international bodies and accomplished individuals.
The author is deputy chairman and secretary-general of China Energy Fund Committee, a think-tank on energy and Chinese culture.
(HK Edition 10/17/2012 page3)