Recently the “Zhenvis Building” next door has been the talk of the town, and there has been quite a lot of opposition and ridicule, but I basically don’t have much of a negative reaction. Peking University’s No. 3 Teaching Building was long ago renamed “Liu Qing Building,” but we still call it “Third Teaching Building,” and the university’s course schedules and notices still call it Third Teaching Building as well; at most, there’s just one more nameplate hanging on the wall. Tsinghua’s Zhenvis Building can also just continue to be called the Fourth Teaching Building, and it won’t interfere with everyday teaching and life. The only issue is that some people will find it an eyesore.
Why find it an eyesore? Because it feels commercialized? Smacking of copper stink? Because the spirit of the university has declined? Because bending to a commercial company has made Tsinghua lose its style?
But does opening one’s arms to commercial companies really mean losing one’s style? Then what should be done? Is it enough to bend to the government and be loyal to state funding to have the style of a university?
This is a different matter altogether from the commercialization of university professors. If the professors in a university spend all day not thinking about scholarship, but only about how to make money, how to work for the Zhenvises and the like, then the spirit of the university is indeed hard to preserve. But now it is merely lending a small patch of wall on one building of the university to let a company donate a bit of money—what does that have to do with the spirit of the university? So-called “the greatness of a university lies in its great masters, not in its great buildings.” One big building is in itself neither here nor there.
What is the spirit of the university? Independence and the pursuit of knowledge. These two things are somewhat contradictory. Because the activity of seeking knowledge requires money: our humanities subjects such as philosophy are still fine, but in the age of Big Science, science and engineering require large sums of funding. But the question is, where does the money come from?
A university’s funding, besides student tuition, comes from only a few sources: government appropriations, university-affiliated enterprises, and social donations. Among social donations, it is either private donations, foundations, or corporate donations. If one relies only on private donations, after all, China does not have many super-rich people, and their ability and awareness are both limited; as for foundations, due to China’s particular conditions, the establishment and operation of civil organizations is unimaginably difficult, so that too cannot be relied upon. If one makes money through university-affiliated enterprises, would that not be even more tinged with copper stink than relying on corporate sponsorship? So there we have it: in the end one can only rely on government appropriations. But does dependence on the government confer dignity? Does it make one independent enough? Of course, if this government were like those in the West—an inactive government that only gives you funding and does not try to control you—then that would be splendid indeed. But as everyone knows, the Chinese government is very active; it is paternalistic. Since it supports you, it is bound to manage you well. It will appoint an entire Party-government leadership team to administer the university, and it will arrange a series of teaching evaluations to inspect the university. Can a university really fail to cope properly with teaching evaluations? If its funding depends entirely on government appropriations?
From the “Zhenvis Building” we see how today’s universities are currying favor with commercial companies, but have we forgotten that our universities have all along been desperately currying favor with the government? And the independence of the university, properly speaking, is not independence in the commercial sense, but in the political sense. It is because the university, as the most powerful “guild,” can form an independent force between civil society and government organs.
To strive to break free of government control, of course, we can hope that the political environment will change. But the university is an independent subject; it cannot simply sit there passively waiting for others to change, and must always try to do something under the existing circumstances. Then one possible direction of effort is first to gradually free itself economically from singular dependence, and open up multiple sources, so as not to be bound by any one end. Isn’t opening up a source of funds from enterprises a very meaningful thing?
Then what are enterprises? We also need to respect enterprises; they too have their style, and are not things you can summon at will and dismiss at will. If you want them to sponsor you, on what basis? They do not ask to place a group of staff members into your administrative leadership, they do not ask to conduct teaching evaluations of your situation all day long, they do not ask professors to spend all day filling out forms to apply for funding, and they do not ask students to go to Chang’an Avenue in the sweltering heat for drill training in goose-stepping marching formality… Isn’t it just that they printed a few characters on the wall of one building? And with that, our university will be controlled by them? Will it have bent to them? We can tolerate bending to the government in just this way, but cannot tolerate a company demanding even so tiny a thing? Isn’t that flattering the powerful and bullying the weak?
Of course, the problem now is that this decision was made internally, without public announcement or discussion among teachers and students. But that is very normal too. If any decision were really put out for public announcement and discussion (rather than sent off to the “student union” as an “organization” for discussion), that would be the strange thing. But the result of this decision is after all that social forces such as enterprises can be more widely employed by the university; on the whole, that should be a good trend.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
Leave a Reply