During a recent visit to China's Zhejiang University, which honored me with the title of visiting professor, I was surprised to learn that faculty members drive their own cars, many of them expensive models by my standard. A professor in his late 40s was driving a ¥10 million Audi; a 30-year-old instructor had a ¥3 million Toyota Camry; and an assistant around 30 owned a ¥4 million Buick.
When did the annual income of Chinese professors surpass that of their Japanese counterparts? I thought intellectuals had become the target of criticism during the 1966-77 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and suffered declines in social status and salaries as a result.
During the past decade, the Chinese government has striven to promote art, science and technology, and a large number of Chinese scholars have published academic papers on a wide variety of subjects in international journals.