Page 74 - IMDR EBOOK 20 OCT 2020

"Pandemic and Beyond: Naviga ng the New Normal" E - Book Year 2020

Productivity and People
China, with its 140 billion population accounts for a huge labour force. Many credit
China`s industrial success to this abundance of manpower. Commonly China is viewed
as low – wage system which majorly accounts for the lower cost and cheap prices. This
was perhaps the case till mid 90s.
As Peter Wu explained, Chinese people have been intensely indoctrinated since 1950s to
believe that “they are the best in world and they will rule the world.” Every Chinese
secretly believes in it. This was also conrmed by Eric Tollemer of Alcan who was a
frequent visitor to China and my colleague during my working days. According to Eric,
this ignited a ame in the minds of each educated Chinese which automatically makes
him put his best in whatever he does and a wee bit more.
Every business house with manufacturing facility in China will endorse that,
• Chinese are relatively quicker to learn and absorb technology.

• Chinese willingness to learn new skills / technics is distinctly more than many
other countries.

• Chinese work with better speed that the South Asians (India, Pak, Bangla Desh
and Shri Lankans).

• Chinese workers are more disciplined than their South Asian counter parts.
While part of the credit for this goes to the traditional, regimental upbringing received by
them inherited from the political regime, a major part goes to the modern, regularly
updated and reformed educational system that has been put in place there. In China
education is not reduced to protable business but is viewed seriously as a major
component of nation and future building process. It is freed from bureaucratic controls
and the universities are largely free to decide their own way of imparting knowledge as
long as the knowledge is modern and updated at par with the world`s best. Education in
China is also an effort in unication of the country (which like our various languages)
speaks many versions of Chinese language but education is only in Mandarin – the
ofcial language.

China has been spending more than 4% of their GDP on education consistently for last 7
years, amounting to 3.7 Trillion Yuans or $ 520 billion. While India also allocates similar
% of GDP in the budget, difference is,
a. The entire budget is consumed in China while in India it is only partly utilized
making the actual expenditure around 2.5 to 2.8%.

b. China spends major part of the budget on modernizing the junior (school level)
educational level ensuring consistent up-dation of curriculum and infrastructure.

c. Chinese scholars are encouraged by government to join well known universities
around the world and acquire latest knowledge and bring it back with them for
further developments in China. When back to China, many of them prefer to
teach in Universities.

d. According to a survey conducted as late as in Jauary 2020, as many as 86% of the
Chinese students taking higher education abroad are keen to return back to their
hole land.

China has been giving great stress on ensuring that their educational curricula are
consistently updated and are kept in tune with the best in the world. (One very
remarkable thing that surfaced is that, though like India, Chinese also have a glorious
past and had an education system in place, with their ancestors excelling in many
disciplines of knowledge, now their current educational stress is on keeping the main
stream education futuristic, modern and `state of art` as prevalent in the world and the
suggestions to include ancient elds of knowledge as well as ways of teaching as part of

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