Lecture highlights China's success, hard work

By Jaclyne Badal
The Collegian

The Chinese tend to rely on hard work and dedication for their success more than on natural intelligence, which helps explain why the country’s economy is growing at such a rapid pace.

That was the message Monday at Fresno State’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute lecture given by Dr. Edwin Williams, an academic and businessman who has traveled to China 13 times since 1982.

Williams said American students should not fear China’s economic development but should learn from the Chinese attitude that success not predetermined; it is earned.

“Already, by second or third grades, too many American kids are excusing poor performance by shrugging their shoulders and saying they must be stupid,” Williams said. “The Chinese say no. Good pupils tend to do well because they work harder.”

Williams said the Chinese mindset has allowed the country to revolutionize major cities such as Shanghai within a few short decades.

Shanghai has undergone a physical transformation as well. The area is now host to more than 300 skyscrapers and a magnetic levitation monorail that can move passengers 20 miles in less than eight minutes, he said.

Williams said today’s China, which has the world’s fastest train and will soon have the world’s largest dam and tallest building, reminds him of America during the first half of the 1900s, when people here were constructing the Empire State Building and the Hoover Dam.

He said Europeans were as weary of Americans then as Americans are of the Chinese today. However, Williams rejected the idea that China’s success is a threat to national prosperity.

“The notion that when your neighbors are poor, you’re richer, I don’t buy that,” Williams said.

Although he portrayed China’s progress as an asset to the world economy and suggested that Americans emulate some Chinese ideals, lecture participants still seemed uneasy about the nation’s growing power.

“I don’t know if I’m in awe of it, in envy of it, or afraid of it,” said Jerry Bird, who sat beside his wife Patricia in the Alice Peters Auditorium.

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