Knowledge is essential for progress

Francis Bacon's aphorism, knowledge is power, is what struck me the most when Xi Jinping, the new Party chief, presented an English-Chinese dictionary as a gift to a schoolgirl in a poverty-stricken rural family.

Xi visited the family on Dec 9 during his first official trip after he was elected general secretary of the Communist Party of China in November.

The family is one of the poorest in Huanglong village, Guangdong province, and lives on subsidies provided by the village. The girl's father cannot work because of poor health, and neither can her mother due to injuries she received in a traffic accident. The mother said she was very happy with the gift, as her daughter will take part in the national college entrance exam next year.

I don't know whether the housewife and her daughter will obtain inspiration from the dictionary they received from the Party's top leader. But the daughter in particular should be wise enough to know that a dictionary symbolizes the way to a better future.

There is an old saying in China that reading thousands of books and traveling thousands of miles is the toil necessary for a person's rise in the world, and a proverb to the effect that books can provide people with the means of earning a great fortune.

It was only during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) intellectuals were looked down upon as good for nothing and overemphasis on political ideology overshadowed and even denied the importance of knowledge for the overall progress of the nation and the establishment of a career for individuals.

China's economy, which was on the verge of collapse in the late 1970s, has developed to be the second-largest in world in a little more than three decades. The role knowledge has played in this can never be overestimated.

Nevertheless, China is yet to catch up with the developed economies when it comes to the core technology in a number of fields that have a bearing on the overall quality and level of its industry.

That explains why innovation has been the word Party leaders and government authorities have repeatedly highlighted on different occasions, and why the building of an innovative society has been made one of the goals the country must pursue in the years to come.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. By the same token, acquiring the knowledge of how to successfully catch fish means the man has mastered a skill that will improve his life.

As far as the future of the family in Huanglong is concerned, it is important the daughter and her brother are aware that working hard to obtain knowledge and master a skill or technology will be the key to their futures and will enable them to shake off poverty.

As far as the country's economic growth and social progress are concerned, being innovative in obtaining as many core technologies as possible is essential for its rise as a real power, and so is the transformation of its economic growth mode so that economic growth is not at the cost of the environment and resources. By always following in the footsteps of others we have no chance to catch up. We need knowledge to address all these problems and we also need people who can be absorbed in scientific research and technical innovations. We need to be innovative and make breakthroughs of our own.

So Francis Bacon's words are still relevant today.

The author is a senior writer with China Daily.

(China Daily 12/18/2012 page8)