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Definition of 'professional' leaves out ethics and common sense
By Wang Yong |
June 8, 2010, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IT'S one thing to say you need professionals, it's quite another to define who are professionals.
Xinhua reported yesterday that China wants to be a "power of professionals" by 2020, citing the government's definition of "professionals" as those with a certain knowledge or skill who can contribute to social progress with creative work.
This definition has two problems.
First, it makes no mention of moral characteristics, such as Confucian values of benevolence and balance of mind.
As long as you have a skill, like financial engineering - even better if you have a foreign diploma - you're likely to become an admired professional. But the global financial crisis has exposed exactly the danger of financial professionals who are benevolent only to the rich and to themselves (See Joseph Stiglitz's story in today's opinion page).
Second, this definition fails to correct China's flawed system of performance review of professionals.
Among the most flawed and ridiculous parts of the review system are rigid demands that all professionals must pass tests in English and computer science for academic promotion.
You want to be a professor of traditional Chinese medicine or music? Sorry, show me your English proficiency test and tell me whether you can change the color of words from green to yellow using Microsoft's Word 2003 software.
Could the United States have sent a single satellite into outer space had it required its scientists to pass a Chinese language test first?
You might say English is more popular than Chinese today, but the issue is not which language is more widely used. The issue is: what has English - computer skills for that matter - to do with one's professional achievement in purely Chinese music or medicine?
Who, after all, wrote Chinese classics on music and medicine long before English and computers came into being?
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