Yu Minhong's inspirational speech: Discovering the mission in the integration of China and the West

Yu Minhong's inspirational speech: Discovering the mission in the integration of China and the West

The traditional Chinese system is based on the promotion of good and kind. From the Confucius era in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period to the long years before the New China Cultural Revolution, China has a set of moral value systems that maintain the stable development of society and are still present in the blood of Chinese people today. The Cultural Revolution broke all the traditional things. After the end of the catastrophe, there was no reconstruction of this system. China immediately entered the commercial society.
However, entering the business community requires a precondition: there must be business rules. There is no commercial rule in China, and name and profit can easily become the only thing people pursue. And for a relatively poor country, entering a commercial society must go through a "water and fire" era, no one can stop it. And China’s traditional morality has been ruined, leaving people without any psychological bottom line.

Western society has experienced a transition from an industrial society to a commercial society. At that time, people also desperately tried to find ways to make huge profits. In the end, they gradually became the main focus of human rights and equality, ensuring social stability and security, and allowing people to earn money to ensure their minimum standard of living. Everything is done by law.
If we analyze from two social systems, China governs the country with morality, and the West governs the country with the law. Then we can see that facing the future, China’s ethical governance is certainly not enough. No matter how good China's traditional morality is, it is not enough to make China face the future. Because we are now playing games not only on the Chinese platform, but also on the platform of the whole world, we need to have the rules of the game on the world platform.
I have always believed that the traditional Chinese moral system is deeper and more consistent than any other country. After modern China opened up to the outside world, it absorbed the systematic and legal things of the Western world, so China will be a relatively perfect form of social development in the future. When any two civilizations are combined without any obstacles, prosperity will emerge, and the history of the East and the West can prove this.

Nowadays, Western culture has entered China, and the combination of Eastern and Western cultures at least on the surface shows an equal way. The Chinese now naturally accept Western advanced things, including Western education systems, financial rules, and so on.

In such a huge wave of convergence, New Oriental has subtly assumed the mission of promoting integration. New Oriental has continuously sent Chinese students to the West to study. Some of the students who have sent out have stayed abroad, but more and more people are coming back, and many of them are already mature in the West. Now, from the central government to the presidents of various universities, many people have studied in New Oriental. They understand both China and the West. After returning home, they combine the best things in the West with the best things in China.

New Oriental does not specialize in the exchange of Chinese and Western cultures. The shallow level of communication has no meaning. For the sake of simplicity, China’s nearly 100-year history is a process of humiliation towards independence and prosperity. Grace, Zhan Tianyou went to the United States, Lu Xun went to Japan, and Deng Xiaoping went to France. They are just an intuitive feeling to the West. Therefore, in this sense, their group of national leaders or scientists brought some intuitive things and some technical aspects of the West back to China.

I believe that the era of real integration between China and the West began in the 1980s, and it really began in the early 1990s when a large number of students went abroad. The next 20 years will still be the climax of Chinese students going abroad. What is the result of this big integration? It is these students who come back to China after they go out and bring back the things that the West really operates, combined with the reality of China. So I think this time the integration is significant. In this sense, New Oriental has played a more important role in promoting the integration of China and the West. From 1990 to 2000, a large number of Chinese students were encouraged by New Oriental. It can be said that the number of Chinese students has at least doubled due to the existence of New Oriental.
However, we find that Chinese graduate students studying abroad have a tendency to do their own experiments after they have gone abroad, to play their own, not to deal with foreigners, and to learn about foreign cultures, customs and laws. So, I am doing another thing now. That is to let qualified Chinese students go to university directly after graduating from high school. One of the biggest advantages of these students is that they can be easily integrated into the local society after entering a foreign university, and the language and culture are integrated. This is due to the teaching characteristics of the undergraduate and the age of the students. Since the beginning of this year, the number of students studying abroad in high school in China has reached 10,000. This means that within the next ten years, this group of people will accumulate to 200,000 to 300,000 people.

For New Oriental, this is of course a market; for China, this is a turning point for talent. Because these people not only understand China, but also deeply understand the West, know how to "play" with Westerners, and finally let Westerners turn around the Chinese. China's future is truly competitive with them.

All Chinese students have a special feature, that is, they are particularly patriotic after arriving abroad. That's because they need to have a support behind them. This support is their own country. The country is weak, Chinese students have no face outside; the country is strong, they have face outside. It is especially important that China’s strength now leaves incomparably large spaces and self-esteem for these students.