Education: Guarding a Tradition

For the mainland and the world, Formosa’s refugee scholars guard a treasure: the tradition of humanistic and rationalistic China. But Formosa is losing intellectuals so fast that the tradition is endangered. Last week, at the University of Washington in Seattle, 100 Chinese and U.S. scholars discussed ways of saving it in a five-day Sino-American Conference on Intellectual Cooperation. Chief recommendation: fast aid from U.S. universities and foundations as well as the Government, which has given Formosa huge sums for military defense but little for mental development.

Formosa has no lack of eager young minds. With elementary education now compulsory, the island boasts 2,000,000 students, or one-fifth of the population, in 2,000 schools and 21 colleges and universities. But full professors average only $30 a month. With inadequate laboratories and libraries to work in. promising scholars desert the island. The U.S. now has nearly 4,000 Chinese students (mainly of science and engineering), more than those from any other country except Canada—and the Chinese seldom go home. Out of 700 science students who left Formosa for the U.S. in recent years, only 40 returned. Critical Need. They leave behind a dwindling group of aging scholars, many past 70, who cannot cope with Formosa’s critical need for research in many fields.

Example : warehouses full of priceless documents, art and archaeological objects, which the Nationalists brought by the shipload in 1949. Without men or money to do the job, little of this treasure has even been catalogued.

A bright spot is Dr. Hu Shih, 68, philosopher, poet, historian, ex-diplomat, and China’s most respected scholar. Anti-Communist Dr. Hu went off to live in the U.S. after the mainland collapse. But in 1957 the Nationalists persuaded him to head up the Academia Sinica, the nation’s top research organization. His 100 scholars are now hard at work studying everything from the island’s nine aborigine tribes to its 33-century collection of Chinese inscriptions. Last year Dr. Hu managed to double salaries for some professors, hopes to triple them this year. But his effort is still hampered by lack of money and facilities in a country that spends 85% of its total budget on military defense.

Self-Help. In Seattle last week Dr. Hu and his colleagues came not as beggars but as bearers of self-help ideas. They want to increase exchange of scholars, students and artists with the U.S.—and give Formosa’s intellectuals something to stay home for. They propose new cooperative ventures with U.S. universities, from science to Oriental religion. They emphasize that the island itself is a unique classroom for studying the mainland. One idea: a center to collate information on Communist China for Western scholars.

Most important, the Chinese feel that Formosa must become a truly thriving outpost of intellectual freedom for all of Asia. Said Dr. Hu, as he summed up the opportunity: “I believe I am justified to conclude that the men now in control of the Chinese mainland are still afraid of the spirit of freedom, the spirit of independent thinking, the courage to doubt, and the spirit and method of evidential thinking I believe the tradition of the humanistic and rationalistic China has not been destroyed.”