【博雅双语名家名作】厉以宁：中国经济改革发展之路（一）

Economic Reform and Development the Chinese Way

In my speech “Technology education and capitalist industrialization: a study of the rise of technological power in Western Europe and America,” I dwelled on the relationship between education and economic growth in light of economic history. What I was driving at was that education is a major recourse for nations to groom technological personnel, and that only by putting a premium on education and the cultivation of talents can less developed nations boost their economic growth rates and catch up with and surpass the developed countries. As I put it in that speech, the role of education in economic growth has five aspects:

“ First, education provides society with a supply of researchers and designers who can venture into the unknown, innovating in science, renovating and transforming productive technology. Without such contingents, the best a nation can do is to tag along after other nations, but in that way you cannot score major breakthroughs in science and technology.

“Second, education provides society with engineers and technicians who can master and apply advanced means of production. Without such technocrats, even if a nation has acquired sophisticated tools of production, it cannot put them to best use.

”Third, education brings forth production and technology managers well adapted to society’s level of industrialization. Without teams of such managers, the production process can be prone to colossal waste in human, material and financial resources, making it impossible to benefit from the superiority of advanced productive technology.

“Fourth, education enhances society’s scientific and cultural attainment, and sets the stage for promoting new products and disseminating and upgrading knowledge in science and technology. At the same time, education also lays the groundwork for the future growth of a nation’s technological prowess, and guarantees the supply of a constant stream of high-caliber researchers, engineers and managers, and skilled workers.

”Fifth, education enables society to preserve and disseminate its accumulation of scientific knowledge and productive experience free from barriers of time and space and national boundaries. It is through education that such accumulated knowledge and experience are spread from one nation to another and from one generation to another as humanity’s shared assets.”

I would like to go on with my observation of the relationship between education and economic growth on the basis of the speech I made and published two years ago. However, this paper has a different focus. While in my previous speech I looked into the major role education plays in expanding the economy and raising its growth rate, this paper underlines education’s important role in ensuring economic stability and sustained growth, and in providing effective solutions to problems that have occurred or may occur in the process of economic growth. In other words, my previous speech was about economic growth per se, whereas this paper is a study of employment, balance of international payments, income distribution, financial balance and other issues occurring in the process of stabilizing and sustaining economic growth. Furthermore, while my previous speech proceeded from the perspective of the economic history of Western Europe and America, this paper takes China’s socialist economy as its focus and background.

This paper is delivered in four sections dealing respectively with education’s relationship with employment, balance of international payments, income distribution, and fiscal balance, so as to illustrate education’s role in guaranteeing economic stability and sustained growth.