Author: Andrew Kipnis, ANU

A household survey I undertook in China in 2005 and 2006 revealed that all of the families surveyed wanted their child to attend university.The sample included a representative number of students from wealthy and relatively impoverished families and of students with above- and below-average academic records. Most of the people I spoke to were shocked that I could even ask such a question. ‘Of course’, or ‘Doesn’t everybody want that?’ were common replies.

The educational desire revealed by this survey is an important social fact about contemporary China. It influences household and national economic priorities, strategies for political legitimation, birth rates, ethnic relations between Han and non-Han groups, gender and family relations and much more. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Rajiv Kumar, ICRIER

Last week I went back to Seoul after 26 years. The city is transformed and so is the economy. In 1984, when I visited the export processing zones, Masan and Iri contributed at least 60 per cent of total exports from South Korea. Posco had been established as a public sector company to take on established global giants and out-competed all of them despite having to import 100 per cent of its raw materials by relying on latest technology, economies of scale and above all, sheer hard work and dedication. And, at the same time, Korea was reaching full employment levels by furiously expanding labour intensive exports.

The question arose in my mind that if Korea could successfully combine the latest technology with large-scale employment generation, could India do it as well? Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Geremie R. Barmé, ANU

The year 2009 marked a series of important anniversaries for China. Some were commemorated in the official media but others, the ‘dark anniversaries,’ passed with a wave of heightened alert and anxiety.

The ‘dark anniversaries’ recalled quelled protests, social unrest and state violence, events such as the 1959 rebellion in Lhasa, the shutting down of the Xidan Democracy Wall in 1979, and the tragedy of the 1989 protest movement. These events challenge the official Party-state narrative of modern China, and understanding them helps us appreciate how China’s strong unitary state has evolved over the past decades. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Rajiv Kumar, ICRIER

At a recent India-China book launch, where human resource development minister Kapil Sibal was present, I made it a point to highlight the comparative picture between India and China in the education sector. This is a crucial sector for emerging economies attempting to achieve inclusive and rapid growth. Moreover, as several recent studies have brought out, returns on skill formation and higher education, which are already substantial, continue to rise as the world increasingly takes on the attributes of a knowledge economy. By the way, the book by Mohan Guruswamy and Zorawar Daulet Singh titled Chasing the Dragon is well worth a read for all those interested in finding out the distance we have to cover to catch up with China. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Peter Yuan Cai, ANU and Adelaide

While Australians are basking in the collateral glory of Tasmanian-born Professor Blackburn’s newly minted status as a member of the scientific Pantheon, the Chinese press is also having a field day with the news that yet another Descendant of the Dragon has snatched the coveted prize. The press, from the party mouthpiece to the tabloids, is saturated with coverage of Charles Kao’s exploits and his development of fibre optics is lauded as a wonder-technology that underpinned the modern telecommunication revolution.

This temporary indulgence in shared glory quickly turned into another, more profound, but by no means new, question: when would China produce its first indigenous Nobel Prize winner? And more importantly, why is our education system incapable of nurturing great scientific minds? Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Kent Anderson & Joseph Lo Bianco

Languages are back in the news. As part of the national curriculum debate, English is one of the first cabs off the rank and Languages Other Than English are following in the second group.

The National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Program also adds limited funding for the next three years to promoting four targeted languages.

Read the rest of this entry »

Guest Author: David Dollar

A few weeks ago I had the unique opportunity to camp out on top of the Great Wall, which was a fitting exclamation mark at the end of my five years as the World Bank’s China Country Director.

It was a cloudy, drizzly day as we started, but then cleared up and turned into a lovely evening. The large group of kids we had with us slept in one of the guard towers along the wall, but I and a few others opted to sleep under the stars. The next morning opened with some mist, but then turned into a spectacular blue day. Some long-term Beijing residents hiking with us noted that they couldn’t recall ever seeing the countryside so green.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Charles Prestidge-King

In 1996, Australia’s current Prime Minister Kevin Rudd wrote an article for a collection entitled ‘Australia and China: Partners in Asia’, edited by Colin Mackerras of Griffith University.

In it, he outlined the case for improving Australia’s cultural and linguistic literacy of Asia in general, and China in particular.

The popular view of China was, as Rudd put it, the ‘product of 150 years of conflicting and intersecting paradigms, which carry inaccuracies’, a curious mix of racism, vestigial or otherwise, strategic paranoia, and a sense of economic opportunity.

Improving Australia’s China literacy would help clear up those inaccuracies, and would give Australians a better understanding of the cultural factors behind key Chinese institutions. With China’s increasing economic significance, it would also give Australians a tremendous advantage in business.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Bruce Chapman, ANU

The federal budget’s announcements of wide-ranging changes to the youth allowance represent the most significant reforms to the system in 15 years, restoring fairness to a system that had strayed from its original purpose.

Many were surprised that the arrangements for this reform could be afforded when the Government seemed likely to postpone this kind of spending increase, given the present financial difficulties.

These changes are being financed essentially through the abolition of a substantial aspect of the allowance’s independent category. The result is increased fairness in a system established to allow greater access to higher education for poorer students.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Henry Makeham, ANU

Peking University is, perhaps, China’s top university. Each year, every position in the School of Management and Finance receives approximately 30,000 applicants. If you get the opportunity to study there, like I did, you are studying with some of the most ambitious, intelligent and hard-working students on the planet.

Peking is an establishment that has been at the heart of intellectual, social and political movements in modern Chinese history. It is a great privilege to experience the inner workings of an institution that commands such a powerful place in the modern Chinese psyche.

After a year and a half of mingling with Peking University students and meeting internationals from world-class institutions like Harvard, Yale and Oxford, I came to the sobering conclusion that Australian graduates are grossly underprepared to compete effectively in the globalised Asian job market.

Amongst the thousands of impressions etched in my memory, this is the one that startled me most.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Rajiv Kumar

With the new government due to take office (hopefully soon), it is now open season for offering ideas, advice and suggestions for policy reforms.

And we are all very good at giving advice and don’t really bother if most of it goes unheeded. It is crucial in my view to retain the policy focus on the most critical issues to give them some sense of urgency and priority.

Drawing up a long list of desirable actions can often end up in virtual policy paralysis due to the inevitable trade-offs amongst the objectives and not enough implementation capacity.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Andrew Elek

Some early indications of the the new United States administration’s trade policy are emerging.

This week’s Bridges Trade News Digest summarises the new annual Trade Policy Report of the President.  There are no big surprises.  The document emphasises the need to ensure that firms and workers are able to adjust to change.

Willingness to complete the Doha Round is contingent on a better balance of gains and short-term costs, so offers no new hope for a speedy conclusion.

At the same time, the President has called for an end to payments to large agribusiness.  Bridges Weekly welcomes the willingness to take on the farm lobby, but it is sceptical about whether the proposals will pass Congress, or whether they will have a direct effect on the Doha negotiations.

On another front, the President seems to have been able to assure the world that the “buy American” provisions in the stimulus package does not mean a reversion to protectionism.  There are no reports of intents to retaliate, but economic nationalism still threatens.

Author: Philippa Dee

The largely self-serving statements from the universities in the lead-up to the Bradley review would have one believe that this is all about how much government money will be spent on higher education, and how it will be divvied up among institutions. Principles of good regulatory design are easily lost in the process. In order to evaluate what comes out of the review, let’s think about what we are trying to achieve.

Even the staunchest small-l liberal would not want to leave the Australian tertiary sector entirely to market forces. At minimum, there needs to be some accountability for the large amounts of taxpayers’ money involved. But to think about how those accountability mechanisms should be designed, it is useful to think about how our tertiary institutions, as (mostly) non-profit organizations, behave.

By definition, non-profit organizations are not primarily about making profits. Their goal is to achieve some non-profit objective – let’s call it a ‘charter’. This is not to say that they don’t care about the bottom line. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Bruce Chapman

NB: This article is from the Harvard College Economics Review, Winter 2008, Vol II, Issue 1.

By all accounts there are emerging problems with US College loans. Increases in tuition over the last decade or so have been well above the rate of inflation, and in 2007 tuition levels stood at around $12,000 and $25,000 a year for public sector and private colleges, respectively.

US students taking out loans to pay tuition and to help survive may end up with very large debts, even of the order of more than $100,000. This has the unfortunate implication that for some graduates it is not feasible to take relatively low paid jobs because the size of their student loan repayments makes such employment hard to afford.

As reported by Mark Huffman in ConsumerAffairs.Com (March, 2007), ‘Why Does College Cost So Much?’, labor economist Ronald Ehrenberg shares that concern and thinks it might unduly influence a student’s choice of career. Huffman reports Ehrenberg as saying: “I am very much concerned and worried … that it may preclude students from entering socially important but low-paying occupations”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Satish Chand

The level of access to basic services such as primary education and basic healthcare varies considerably across the nations of the Southwest Pacific. PNG ranks low, if not the last, on this count. Its geography in the form of the rough terrain and archipelagic nature, history in terms of a highly fragmented and sometimes strongly divided society, and climatic conditions which makes malaria (and other vector-born diseases) endemic to the nation is major handicaps to universal and effective delivery of basic services. The recent arrival and galloping spread of HIV compounds the problems many fold.

Education is critical for development. Read the rest of this entry »