Provost’s Spotlight to Shine on Eminent Scholar Shaomin Li
Shaomin Li
By David Simpson
Shaomin Li has carved out his scholarly niche in international business, focusing on China. He knows his subject deeply, not only in his mind but through lived experience.
Born in Beijing, he grew up during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, which uprooted his family, forced him to toil and struggle, and set him on the path of escape through intensive study.
Today, Li is a professor and Eminent Scholar in ODU's department of management. He edits the journal Modern China Studies, has published many academic articles and books, and has written commentaries for The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and The New York Times. In 2008 he won the Outstanding Faculty Award presented by the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia.
He will be honored at the fall Provost's Spotlight on Oct. 30 at the University Theatre, where he will discuss his teaching, his research and his fascinating life.
As a teenager who had shown artistic talent, Li was recruited by the People's Liberation Army to produce propaganda posters. That subject has so fascinated him that he continues to collect such artworks long after becoming a U.S. citizen. Last year, posters from his collection drew visitors to a Chrysler Museum of Art show titled "The Art of Revolution."
After Mao died in 1976 and the Cultural Revolution ended, Li earned a B.A. in economics from Peking University, then began graduate studies in the United States. He completed an M.A. in sociology at the State University of New York at Albany, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University.
But even so, the long arm of the Chinese government would find him, once again throwing his life into turmoil. Indirectly, that experience would lead him to ODU.
Ahead of his appearance at the Provost's Spotlight, the Center for Faculty Development reached him with a few questions.
How did growing up during the Cultural Revolution shape you as a person and a scholar?
When the "Great Leader" Mao Zedong launched the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976), I was 9. My father, Honglin Li, was a political philosopher. He was denounced by Mao's communist party as a member of a "black gang" who was therefore sent to the countryside to be re-educated. From 1969 to 1973, our family lived in a farm. Life was hard. I worked on a duck farm, in rice fields, and on whatever jobs given to me. Every morning, I would carry a big basin of duck feed into the duck hut. In addition to the hungry ducks, a black cloud would greet me — the mosquitoes. Once they sunk their needles in my arms, I would tense up my arm muscles so that they wouldn't be able to pull their needles out. I then squashed them. The hardest work was to till the wet and muddy rice fields. It was so hard that horses would collapse after tilling the fields, but we had to do the job since there weren't enough horses. I was the youngest in my rice tilling team. The work was so exhausting that I would sleep so deep in the night and often wetted my bed — our communal bed of 12 team members — and got laughed at. The thought of spending the rest of my life like this was most depressing. I tried to read to escape from the hopeless feeling. I would read anything that had words in it, even an insecticide manual!
In 1976, with Mao's death, the Cultural Revolution ended. A year later, universities began to admit students by Gaokao (China's National College Entrance Examination, equivalent to the SAT). I wanted to go to college, so I borrowed a pile of high school textbooks and finished them in about three months. I did well in Gaokao — with the highest score in my region — and was admitted to Peking University to study economics.
I think the most important thing I learned during the Cultural Revolution was to have faith and willpower. The faith in knowledge, and the willpower to learn it. All I could do back then was to improve myself. Once opportunities came, such as China's opening up after Mao, the ones who had prepared themselves were able to seize them.
What brought you to America and, eventually, to ODU?
My coming to America was not intended, but rather emergent. In 1981, when I was about to graduate from Peking University, I took the National Entrance Examination for Graduate Studies in sociology, and I received the highest score in Peking University. Later I was told that the one with the highest score was to go to America to study. So I came to SUNY Albany in 1982. In 1985 I received a four-year scholarship from Princeton University and completed my doctoral study there in 1988. At Princeton, I did a survey study about the political and economic attitudes of Chinese people and concluded that if allowed to choose, the Chinese people would overwhelmingly prefer a system that protects political and economic freedoms, such as Taiwan's. This result was published in a journal, and I also wrote an op-ed based on the study for The Wall Street Journal entitled "Taiwan Was Right All Along" in 1989. Well, little did I know that, some 12 years later, I would be found to be wrong!
In early 2001, on a lecture trip from Hong Kong to Shenzhen — I was teaching at the City University of Hong Kong — I was arrested by the Chinese border guards for "endangering state security." An evidence of my crime was the op-ed I wrote — how dare you say Taiwan was right! The police interrogators accused me. The international community condemned the arrest, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution demanding my release, and President Bush intervened. After five months, I was freed. I felt it was time to leave Hong Kong, and ODU was looking for someone to teach international business. I applied and came.
List the chief obstacles the West faces in doing business with China. Can these difficulties be overcome?
Two obstacles stand out. First, unlike America in which people and firms follow public rules (laws and regulations, called rule-based), China is relation-based, by which I mean people and firms rely on private relations to conduct business and protect their interests. The reason for Chinese firms to rely on private relations is not because China does not have public rules such as laws; it is because laws are not impartially enforced, judges tend to be corrupt, and the Chinese Communist Party is above the laws.
The relation-based way can be effective and efficient if you have good relations with powerful people, such as party officials, and if you only hire people you know well — brothers and sisters. In a country without a good legal system, dealing with strangers is dangerous. This is why Chinese business people tend to develop friendship first and then do business second, whereas Americans are accustomed to conducting business at arm's length with strangers, which often leads to failures in relation-based markets like China. The gap between what is written in laws and what is practiced in reality provides opportunities for outsiders to invest and insiders to loot.
I have co-developed a theory of rule-based and relation-based governance to explain why the East and West do business differently. Actually, it is not so much due to cultural differences; it is because of the difference in the stage of political and economic development. When the public rules are not working, people naturally resort to personal connections and private networks. Our theory has been well received. The Economist magazine featured it twice.
Second, the Chinese Communist Party runs the whole country like a corporation. People in China do not have the full rights that citizens in democracies enjoy, and firms there do not have the independence and property rights to which their counterparts in democracies are entitled. To a great extent, firms in China are subsidiaries or business units of the party, and the party leadership is the CEO of China Inc.
The interplay between China and other countries such as the U.S. is essentially a competition between a huge corporation and other states, with the former having the ability to order all its subsidiaries, business units and employees to achieve the goal of the party, and the latter having to balance diverse interests among their constituencies.
For American business executives doing business with Chinese firms, they need to be fully aware that they are not dealing with independent firms whose goal is to maximize profit; these firms may carry out the Communist Party's order, or have access to nearly unlimited resources from the party.
Describe a memorable moment from your teaching career.
My most memorable moment in teaching was related to my teaching philosophy: "Be a clock builder, not a time teller."
I learned the phrase from a great book entitled "Built to Last." Imagine that someone is very good at telling the time. He looks at the sun and instantly claims: "It is September 13, 2019, twelve o'clock, 43 minutes, and 35 seconds." He is incredible, a genius at telling time. Now, imagine that another person, instead of telling the time, builds a clock that tells the time. The time teller will be gone someday, but the clock will last, telling the time even after the life of its builder. This analogy is something I use in my teaching. I try to make my students clock builders, not time tellers. What is a "clock" in education? It is the mindset, the ability and the inspiration that enables the student to seek knowledge and truth, and apply them in a systematic way throughout their lifetime of learning and teaching others. I want to build such a clock in my students. Clock building takes time. It requires patience, investment, and carries with it the risk of failure. Time telling, on the other hand, is fun and provides instant gratification.
A few years ago, at the end of a semester, I used this analogy to conclude my class. To make the discussion more relevant to the content of the course, I presented the students a scenario of two fictitious students. Both are young, single and equally intelligent, and both attend college full time. One works full time to earn money; the other takes out a student loan. I asked my students which one is more preferable. Most preferred the working student. When I asked why, most of them answered, "Taking a loan is risky; what if I cannot pay it back?"
This is precisely my point. While I admire those students who work to support themselves through college, I think in many cases students are better off taking out a loan and focusing on their education. This is especially true if the student works for the wrong reasons. One wrong reason is that "I work so that I can buy stuff," such as a sports car. In other words, "I want instant gratification" (at the cost of long-term reward). I suggest that these students take out a loan and concentrate on their studies so that they can increase earning ability beyond paying for a sports car. Another wrong reason, in my view, is, "I am not sure that I can get a better job after college. Thus, I'd better keep my current job." Students who think this way lack self-confidence, and their prediction often becomes self-fulfilling.
A week after this lecture, I received a long email from one of the students in the class. He said, "I just wanted to thank you for the last bit of advice you gave about being a clock maker and not a time teller. I had been thinking a lot about a career choice I had made and your advice helped me think much more clearly about my situation."
He told me that his life's goal is to fly fighter jets and he plans to pursue a highly competitive program in which only a very few will succeed. Before he goes, he has several months of free time. He can either work to make some money or take private flying lessons to improve his odds in the competition.
This student also wrote that before hearing the analogy I presented, "I was planning on working a lot and was just going to use the money to do a few vacations here and there ... I didn't want to go take private pilot courses ... because they are expensive and I wouldn't be able to buy ... stuff ... if I took them. I really didn't think twice about the stupidity of that decision until your class. ... If flying jets is my dream why shouldn't I take out a small loan in order to make myself significantly more competitive?
"Your lecture really helped me realize ... making sacrifices is necessary to help facilitate the steps I need to take to accomplish my goals ... I'm going to take private pilot courses this summer to give me an edge on the competition. ... In a couple years when I'm flying my jet I will definitely remember your class and the advice you gave ...."
I sat in front of my computer screen, reading this email several times. What more could I ask for a reward as an educator? For us, research projects may fail, lectures may be boring, but we never give up on clock building and we never give up on our students. As the Old Dominion University slogan says - we are "changing lives," one at a time.
The Provost's Spotlight will be presented from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Oct. 30 at the University Theatre. Refreshments provided.
