Yesterday I had the opportunity for an eye-opening talk with a man who for 20 years has been the director of a world-renowned biochemistry and physiology research institute.\u00a0 His job frequently takes him to key labs in China and Japan, and he always has scores of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean staff scientists and postdocs working in his own labs.\u00a0 Here are some of the mind-boggling things the director told me:<\/p>\n
\n1. In their labs, when Chinese and Japanese scientists are engaged in discussions on research topics, they often speak in English or heavily lace their Chinese and Japanese with English.<\/p>\n
2. Chinese and Japanese scientists regularly write to each other in English, often even on non-research topics.<\/p>\n
3. There is an extremely strong imperative in the scientific culture of China and Japan to publish in English language journals.\u00a0 In China, there is even a fixed award schedule for researchers who get published in top English language journals, from very large monetary bonuses to individuals whose work makes it into the pages of Science and Nature, on down through lesser, but still substantial, rewards for work in less prestigious, specialized journals.<\/p>\n
4. English is the de facto language of scientific culture in China and Japan.<\/p>\n
5. The Chinese government and Chinese business interests offer scientists who have landed coveted positions in American universities and industry extremely lucrative packages to buy them back to the motherland.\u00a0 So great are the financial inducements that American institutions simply cannot match them.<\/p>\n
6. Many labs in China are now state-of-the-art with world-class equipment purchased abroad; the best labs in China are even better equipped than the general run of labs in America.<\/p>\n
7. Despite all of these manifest attractions, Chinese scientists often hesitate to return to the motherland because of the political, social, and economic climate.<\/p>\n
8. Finally, and this is a very delicate subject, the FBI frequently contacts the director and sometimes comes to the director\u2019s institute to discuss sensitive matters concerning espionage carried out by Chinese scientists working in his labs.\u00a0 One woman scientist who had worked at the director\u2019s institute was actually caught red-handed acquiring classified, high-technology equipment through her position in the institute and sending it back to China with the help of her husband (she apparently had been doing this for years before she was apprehended).\u00a0 Astonishingly, this female Chinese scientist was neither imprisoned nor deported from the United States; she merely lost her job at the research institute.<\/p>\n
Some of what the distinguished director told me I had heard or seen previously for myself, but I had never before received such a complete and coherent account from such an authoritative source.\u00a0 Everything he says offers confirmation for what William C. Hannas wrote in his prescient books, The Writing on the Wall and Asia\u2019s Orthographic Dilemma.\u00a0 If anyone were systematically to gather information from scientists in positions of authority at scores of major research institutes in academia, industry, and business, as well as investigate what really goes on in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean research institutes in terms of organized acquisition of high-technology equipment, sensitive databases, proprietary designs and processes, patented engineering blueprints, and so forth, I am sure that their findings would provide even more devastating confirmation for Hannas\u2019s pathbreaking volumes.<\/p>\n
I only wish to add that there are signs that the surge toward English in East Asia is also encroaching upon the social sciences and even the humanities in certain sectors.\u00a0 I will here only give one small example by way of evidence, but could cite many more instances from my own experience.<\/p>\n
Two weeks ago, a well-known Chinese historian, who has been my friend for about twenty years and who is the head of a research institute in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), wrote to me saying that the powers-that-be in CASS had issued an urgently-worded directive that research units under their administration should go all out to publish their individual work in English, that journals from CASS should have English versions, and, moreover, that adequate financial support would be provided to pay for skilled English translators from outside of China at going rates.<\/p>\n
Thirty years ago, I predicted that all of this (the rapid shift to English) would happen IF East Asian countries did not aggressively expand the applications of Romanization for their own languages.\u00a0 To my mind at the time, this was simply a foregone conclusion due to the archaic nature of sinographic writing and the relatively inflexible phonetic representational ability of syllabic writing in comparison with alphabetic scripts.<\/p>\n
A last footnote:\u00a0 Several astute, impartial observers (both in East Asia and in the West) have mentioned to me that China is fast becoming (albeit still somewhat clandestinely) the world\u2019s largest Christian nation, and we already know how important a role Christianity plays in Korea and among the Korean diaspora (the anomaly is Japan, where Christianity has made little headway since its severe persecution several centuries ago, shortly after it arrived there; this is probably due to the overwhelming role that Buddhism [and to a lesser extent Shinto] plays in all areas of public and private life).\u00a0 It seems to me rather curious that the Englishization, as it were, of language usage in China is taking place in tandem with the Christianization of belief.\u00a0 (Please note that I am a complete agnostic and that I have long since been thoroughly Sinicized in terms of my own language usage, so I have absolutely no stake in the Englishization or Christianization of China; I am only reporting what I have witnessed — as we might say in Chinese, this is a brief JIAN4WEN2 JI4 \u898b\u805e\u8a18 [\u201ca record of things seen and heard\u201d].)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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