中央电视台国际频道的《今日话题》节目主要由海内外知名人士或专家学者就时事热点和典型的社会文化现象进行对话。我们的“对话”频道—Channel D栏目就是从该节目中撷取最精彩的片段进行加工整理，在浓缩其中智慧的同时也保持了其原本的口语特色，使你如同亲耳聆听他们的谈话。

　　逸云 整理编写

　　Z: Zhao Bin, hostess of the CCTV "Dialogue" program

　　S: Lawrence H. Summers, president of Harvard University

　　Z: Since your first visit to China in 1979, this is the ninth time you are visiting this country. Could you summarize the changes you have witnessed over the years?

　　S: When I first came to China it was not possible to make phone calls to the US. When I first came to China, I met few people who could speak English. When I first came to China, nobody was talking about watching TV. People were hoping to get access to radios. When I first came to China there was no idea in anybody's mind of anything like the Internet or email. So the world has changed a great deal in twenty years, and China has changed even more. I believe when the history of the last part of 20th century is written 200 years from now, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War would be the second story.<注1> The first story in that history book would be the dramatic rise of countries where billions of people live. That's the story that would start in China.

　　Z: You've come to China this time to participate in an opening ceremony of an advanced training program in public administration<注2>. So can you start with telling us something about this program?

　　S: Yes, I think it's a very important initiative<注3> between Harvard and Tsinghua University to train 30 scholars in public administration. People who actually work in local governments all over China will learn the tools of public management in everything from the proper measurement of costs, to thinking through the challenges of regional economic development, to dealing with environmental problems. These kinds of issues are very important for China. They are very important for the US. And there is a lot we can learn in both directions. The program, which is involved with the university and also the Development Research Council of the Chinese government, will give the students the chance to study for <注6> weeks here in Tsinghua University with some of Harvard faculty participating in their instruction. They will come to the US and study at Harvard for 5 weeks. So we give them a combination of international perspectives. And I think it will be very very valuable for the students involved. And I know we in the university will deepen our understanding of Chinese issues from participation and the program. And I know also that we'll learn from some of the very important successes that Chinese officials have had, for example, success issues like making literacy nearly universal, issues in reducing mortality among mothers and children.<注4>

　　Z: The same question has been asked about programs like MBA and MPA.<注5> Is it possible to teach someone to become a leading civil servant6 in the classroom? Is it more a practical thing?

　　S: It's a very good question--whether you can teach the leadership, whether you can teach management. And it's probably true that the greatest leaders have some special intangibles<注7> that they are born with, that are probably very hard to teach in the classroom. But you know, if you talk to anyone who's been a successful leader, they think they've gained a lot from experience told by people who were mentors<注8> to them. They think they've gained a lot from their experience in practical situations. And all those are things that we can hope to do in classes. Not by lecturing to people but by providing them with alternatives to work through case studies<注9>, to engage in discussions with people who grappled<注10> with these problems before, to work together as a group, to find common solutions. If you look at the success that training in business administration has had around the world and the way that the kind of training has been provided in business administration, using a case method is now emulated<注11> all over the world. That wouldn't be happening if there wasn't some useful knowledge being conveyed. So I believe the program like this can make an important contribution.

　　I certainly found when I was in the government that I could learn very important things from those who were in the academic sector at a particular point. And I think many people find that as well. So I suspect that if you look at universities in the future, you are going to find even more than at present that they are involved in educating people who are in the middle of their careers. You know we've had a traditionally what I'd like to call the "fill-tank" theory of education. You fill yourself up with knowledge when you are young, you gradually run through the knowledge, you run out of gas and you retire. In a world where people are living longer than they were, in a world where more and more people are changing careers, in a world where changes are happening, there is more need for continuing education throughout life. And I think that's going to change those who are in the business in producing and disseminating<注12> knowledge. It's going to change our work in very important ways.

　　Z: What other projects are going on between Harvard and Chinese universities?

　　S: Harvard has a number of projects. We have a very exciting project under way of environmental cooperation that is going to seek to bring new techniques to measuring environmental pollutants<注13>, so that we can come to the most accurate judgments as to what their sources are and how they can be reduced in China. Some of the early research for that project is really quite troubling. It suggests that there're maybe 200,000 people who die prematurely<注14> each year in China as a consequence of particular air pollution. If that's right, it certainly has very important policy implications.

　　Another project we've engaged in between Harvard Business School and Tsinghua University focuses on the training of business leaders, and focuses particularly on the needs of those who are moving from middle positions to top positions, the needs of selling an overall strategy, the needs of managing finances as well as the needs of managing a company in an effective way. These are all aspects that are covered in the course. I hope that in the years ahead we'll broaden our cooperation in all kinds of areas. Of course we have very strong cooperation and I'd like to see it get stronger in the study of the Chinese language. I am convinced that because of China's rising importance in the global system more and more Americans are going to need to study Chinese if they are going to take their full part in the global economy.

　　Z: The areas you mentioned are rather pragmatic<注15>. What about other areas, areas like the humanities<注16>? Women studies, or literature, for instance?

　　S: We've recently had an important change in our policies and that is students have the opportunity to study abroad. We feel it's important. We come to realize that spending time in a different country is an important part of becoming an educated young adult. So we want our students to be doing more of that. And I want them to be doing it consistently with the liberal arts tradition. And that will mean more students studying literature, more students studying the experience of different groups in the society. And it would mean something else for the university over time. Traditionally in the university art has been westernized, but increasingly works that come from the east, works that probably come from China will be a larger part of the canon<注17> that scholars and graduate students of our university study.

　　Z: Nowadays in China the study of the humanities is undergoing a difficult time because a lot of money is being spent on more pragmatic areas. What do you think can be done about this?

　　S: I can't prescribe<注18> for Chinese higher education. I have enough trouble figuring out what Harvard should consider doing in different areas. I would say that if one looks at the great leaders of history, so many of them were people who were deeply steeped19 in history, were deeply steeped in literature, were people who thought about lessons for today. I think the kind of reading that Abraham Lincoln did as a young man or the kind of reading that Churchill did was a great deal of literature. So I think a society that wants to prepare people for positions of important leadership, a society that wants to be wise in the years ahead, needs to be a society that has committed to not only the instrumental use of knowledge, whether it is accounting or engineering, but also to thinking of the eternal questions, questions of what it is to know, of what it is to love, of what is human nature. And I think that's very very important for higher education, for everyone.

　　Z: In the press conference held in March 2001 when you were first elected president of Harvard, you talked about a global economy that is increasingly shaped around knowledge, and you said that it is an extremely exciting time for higher education. Can you elaborate on<注20> this remark?

　　S: I think if you look at where value resides in the economy you find that for centuries value resided principally in land. For the most recent century, it resided most in machinery, in buildings. Increasingly if you look at the value today, it resides in ideas, intellectual property. It resides in organizations that bring people with knowledge. So knowledge is in many ways the stuff<注21> of today's economy, in the way machinery was the stuff of earlier economy, and land was the stuff of the still earlier economy. And of course the production of knowledge is what university is all about. You know people often say that universities are ivory-tower<注22> institutions. If you think about other organizations, even the government of China, they are slowly becoming more like universities. People feel free to argue with their bosses in a way that they once didn't. Hierarchy is giving way to teamwork.<注23> The effort is increasingly to find the best possible ideas from whatever sources. These are becoming greater values very broadly. So it seems to me that the knowledge economy is a quite different economy and will be more different in the future. But it seems to me to be one where academic traditions and the one we do in universities can make a particularly great contribution.