Many media friends have commented that I am a person who "uses my feet to do learning". I think if I am a little more humorous, I can say that I am a brainless person, and I think with my feet; if I am more positive, it is that the research base I have formed is mainly based on traveling all over the world and carrying out investigation and research everywhere. And Twice in my life, I think it's worth introducing to you.
1. First investigation and research experience
The first time was in 1985, and many of the young people here had not yet been born. That year, China proposed "gradient development", that is, to develop the coast first, then drive the central region, and finally drive the west. At the same time, the slogan "Let some areas get rich first, and some people get rich first" was taken as the guiding ideology of the state policy. You should know that China as a whole is distributed in three steps, because China has 9.6 million square kilometers, resulting in very large differences in geography, climate, resources and environment. Therefore, it seems reasonable to rely only on the development of the coastal side to promote the development of the inland, but in fact it is probably far from the national conditions, so there was some discussion at that stage.
From my point of view, China should at least have a "π" strategy. "π" is to turn the Yangtze River and the Yellow River into a symbol connected to a coastal side to form a π, which represents that China should have at least three sides, which means that comprehensive regional development should be realized, not just individual regions.
In order to make my policy suggestions have a basis, I organized a "Yellow River Ten Thousand Miles" inspection. At that time, I was 34 years old, and I wanted to make some noise and let all sectors of society pay attention to the Chinese mainland especially the western region is a region with very rich resources and great development potential. Because at that time, many military enterprises no longer engaged in third-line construction and switched to civilian products, so there were a number of military factories that converted to the production of motorcycles with Japanese technology, and I talked to these military enterprises, asked them to sponsor a number of motorcycles, and pulled a little sponsorship, such as refueling, staying in a shop, eating and other living expenses. We also organized a group of reporters to start an investigation from the source of the Yellow River to the mouth of the Yellow River in the name of the news unit, and we walked for 4 months and more than 20,000 miles.
This is the first time I have experienced the great rivers and mountains of the great motherland. I ran seventy or eighty kilometers in the wilderness of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Yellow River Hukou Waterfall was not as good as it is now, when I could drive the motorcycle all the way to the edge of the waterfall, the mud fog people covered a shell, in addition to the eyes can also blink all over the body is mud. It is the feeling of "Dust in the wind", in the magic of nature, man is like a grain of dust. On the way, there are also various situations, such as storms, all kinds of road breaks, mud, and even deep desert, in short, there are many difficulties, which will not be elaborated here. What I want to say is that after such a relatively profound experience, people will gradually let go of themselves, and they will no longer argue whether it is better to "π" the development policy of the strategy.
Having said all this, I mainly want to report to my young friends, and I think that research is a lifelong thing. Soon after I started working, I had an opportunity to transform my worldview in nature, and such a research experience was crucial to me. Of course, my experience is not replicable, and this transformation does not mean that people can not stick to their ideas and can compromise casually. I'm trying to tell you that we're not really anything.
So until now, although it seems that I have some social influence, I have always been unable to help but boast, and if anyone says a good word or two about me, I don't know how to answer. My first reaction was how old am I? Because my foundation is very shallow and my knowledge is insufficient. People say "learn, then know the deficiencies", I say "go, then know the deficiencies". Only by walking so many places do we know that our knowledge is very limited. So I hope that I will understand my words from a positive point of view. I am criticizing myself first, rather than asking others to come up, I just want to say that I am doing this, as to whether my approach is meaningful and worth learning from young people, I can't say this well, if you are willing to learn from it after listening to it, you can learn from it. This is the first time I want to tell you about my experience with research.
2. Second investigation and research experience
The second time is probably even more interesting. Everyone knows the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which was very impressive at the time, and it was difficult to be explained by any theory that could be taken at that time, and it greatly exceeded the experience of my generation. So how to understand this matter, I think most people from documents, from newspapers or from other second-hand information and other materials to form their judgment. But does that work? Obviously not.
At that time, the Rural Policy Research Office of the CPC Central Committee, where I worked, was also abolished during this period. At this stage, my work was specifically involved in the World Bank's loan assistance to China project in the 1980s, and the direction of this project was whether it could promote the institutional transformation required by the West in rural China, to privatization, marketization, liberalization, and globalization, and to use Western technical means to monitor and evaluate.
We are considered to be the earliest batch of scholars to do Western-style investigation and research in China using Western methods, and compared with many scholars in colleges and universities who use Western research methods to do so-called quantitative analysis, I think it has been several generations apart. Therefore, on the one hand, the great changes that took place in the soviet union and the Eastern European countries of the socialist camp disintegrated, and all the explanations for the great changes were basically from the West and were all second-hand; on the other hand, I was personally involved in the institutional changes of the Western model, and such a very complex surrounding environment made me think a lot, and the information obtained at that time was not enough to support me to do any analysis and form any judgment. So what to do? I thought I was going to have to find an opportunity to do some research in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries.
In this situation, I just had a chance. Because when I went to the United States in the 1980s to study, I participated in a large-scale cross-strait comparative study in China funded by the National Science Foundation, which required strict sampling, which is what we call quantitative analysis today. The main school doing quantitative surveys in the United States at that time was the University of Michigan in the United States, and I worked in their computer room for three months. This is an opportunity for me to go abroad, of course, the purpose of my going out is not only to finish this work, I also want to go to sudong to see. So I saved as much as possible these accommodation expenses, food expenses, etc., and when I saved a few thousand yuan in the bank, I could prove that I had the ability to pay for travel expenses, so I went to apply for a tourist visa.
In this way, I flew from the United States across the Atlantic Ocean into Western Europe, bought a European train pass from Western Europe to enter Eastern Europe, and that trip took 40 days to visit 7 Soviet and Eastern European countries. Generally speaking, we are based on the values of the Western media to form reports or according to the documents and materials formed by various officials to judge what really happened in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, such a general and popular understanding. After this field visit, I have raised this understanding to a higher level, into a condition that can be observed closely and in-depth to form materials and then make judgments. That's why I say that investigation and research is a lifelong thing, because when you encounter such a big problem and you can't figure it out, when our limited knowledge and theory alone can't explain it, we have to do some field investigation and research.
This time an immersive expedition was made in the Eastern European countries of the Soviet Union. I was from Italy to Eastern European countries, from Italy to Yugoslavia to buy tickets, there was a ticket seller Italian said to me in poor English you may not be able to go, I asked why you can't go, he said a long paragraph I did not understand, but he still sold me a ticket to Belgrade. After getting on the train, I fell asleep in the car, until I heard the car stop, I saw that it was Zagreb, and then I heard the conductor shout that all the occupants should get off the train, saying that the car was not leaving. I was a little anxious, and I said I was far from Belgrand, and I had just arrived in Croatia. I asked why we got out of the car, and an old man next to me said, "Don't you know about the war?" "I said I don't know, he said the shells blew up the railroad, you're the only one here." Doesn't that mean I'm going to get halfway up the road? And I said so what do I do? The other Chinese ran away as soon as the battle was fought, and only I was stupid enough to still be in the car. Then he asked me what I was doing, and I said, and he said you go with me, it's not expensive to stay here, 10 dollars can make you stay in an international hotel, and he took me to an international hotel. Finally, for half a day, the international hotel is two prices for internal and external guests, foreign guests are 100 US dollars, and domestic guests are only 10 US dollars, that is, it is cheap for domestic talents. He looked a little embarrassed, and then he said, I told you that you can live for $10, and now you have to spend $100, I'm a little sorry for you, but I can't bring you back to my house tonight, I'll go to my family first, if I can bring you back to my house tomorrow. So he went back to his wife for instructions, and after getting the approval, he took me to their house the next day. So I suddenly moved into an Eastern European family, a university professor, an intellectual, and his wife was a chemical engineer, and the family conditions were good. He took me to many places and a lot of people, and I suddenly entered a completely local discourse environment.
Things like this happened many times on my trip, like when I went to Yugoslavia to fight Croatia, and all the stations were covered with seals, sandbags and soldiers with guns. I plan to live in the people's homes, every time I first find a café to buy a cup of coffee and then say to the crowd in those cafes who speak English, we will talk if we can speak English, and when we talk, I will say that your family has land? I want to go to your house and get a reply that I can go to their house with my luggage.
That's how I live in people's homes along the way. One of the things that touched me the most was when I arrived in the Czech Republic and saw an advertisement on the station saying that I could live in an apartment for $10. So I went, and after the registration, the staff gave me a piece of paper, writing which building and which district and which apartment I should go to, give me a key, and then lock the door on the table when I left. As a result, I got on the tram and I lost the piece of paper. I went to tell the driver that I had lost the note, and the driver couldn't understand what I was saying, so I shouted a local word to the passenger behind me, and I couldn't understand what he was saying, and then a woman stood up and said to me, although I couldn't understand what she said, I understood that she meant to let me go with her, so I followed her out of the car. Because she didn't have English, she took me home and called a friend who knew English, so she could make my situation clear on her friend's phone. Then her friend called again to find the station, and the station staff told me which apartment I had registered, and she took me to the apartment, during which she said a word to me, but not in English, and finally I probably understood what she meant, that is, the next morning let me not rush to leave, she would call her friend to come. The next morning her English-speaking friend came, and it turned out that they were a tour guide, so she took me to visit all kinds of points and people I wanted to see for free. Until now, I have been touched, I think the goodness of people in this world should always be remembered, they have helped me a lot.
Of course, I also encountered some other situations later, such as when I went to Germany once, and I forgot which hotel I should go to. Because I would have a contact person when I went to the meeting, he said very clearly that he would pick me up at the station when the time came, so I was completely relieved and didn't bring any materials. As a result, when I got off the train, I found that the station was transparent, I didn't know where he picked me up, I didn't look for him, and I didn't know where to go. Encounters like this abroad actually feel weird, but I end up meeting good people who took me all the way. It's all a very good experience, so I say that people are really good, and you see that people's kindness is everywhere.