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During the sixties and the seventies, there was a best  selling long running Broadway musical entitled “Fiddler on the Roof”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddler_on_the_Roof which I actually first saw in Holland, and which later on was made into a movie.  There was a popular song in the musical entitled“If I Were a Rich Man”  in which a poor peasant fantasizes what he will do if hewere rich.

Recently in the comment section of one of my blogs,  a reader raised the following question: “我看国外的科学家有很多都有反哺自己所在行业的心愿，国内科学家都想当上院士，为一家利益代言，或混个一官半职，能一劳永逸？何老师，您说这是什么差异造成的呢？文化，传统？ 十分感谢您对后辈分享了您的观点。”and my reply

博主回复(2014-3-16 20:59)：Your question has been extensively discussed by many persons,  including myself, in the pages of ScienceNet in the past. I believe most people,  including the leaders ingovernment know what needs to be done. It is a matter of pick-and-choose and what  % of the general population REALLY care about S&T reform a s  the first order of business.

This leads to the title of this blog “If I were (the leaders  of the Chinese Government what would I do about science andtechnology reform?)

Here would be my thinking:

90% of the population (my guess) probably don’t really care about  reform in science and technology administration. They are more interested in  improving the quality of their lives. Of the 10%  that cares and  complains legitimately: 3% just talk and won’t do anything concrete  beyond keeping  themselves clean ; 3% have adapted and are enjoying the benefit of the current system (thus, they don’t want to rock the boat) ;  2% vote with their feet and emigrate elsewhere; another 1.5% just gave up; only 0.5% are idealists who keep on fighting for thebetter, but we all know that 书生成不了大事. Let them vent their frustrations.  It will give the impression of an open society and soften the image of my regime.

Thus as Alfred Newman ( a fictional character in the US humor magazine -  MAD)  would say “Why we worry?” I got other bigger problems to  take  care  of  such as, monumental  problems  in pollution, income inequality, population  demographics, energy self-sufficiency, and continued economic growth  (my six year old article  http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-36645.html talked about these).  Besides, let other nations bear the  cost and hard work of innovation, work out all the kinks in converting the innovations into usable technology which we can adopt with little cost. At the current level of our GDP per capita for China we gladly forego the prestige of being the first or the fame of a Nobel prize.

Having said the above, I must add that in my opinion the Chinese  culture particularly the last 160+ years influenced a great deal of popular  thinking.  People learned thru foreign occupation, war, disasters, and  natural calamities to live day-by-day, grab what one can, and not plan  for the long term  or for anybody beyond ones immediate family.  It is everyone for himself.  Some of the corruptive problems of S&T can be attributed to such thinking.

I close by quoting from the The Serenity Prayer:  God grant me the serenity to accept the  things I cannot change; courage to change the things  I can; and wisdom to know the difference. . .http://www.cptryon.org/prayer/special/serenity.html.

I must say it is difficult to argue against such logic even though one must not give up  and must still try.