I’m sure this NYT article, about how Chinese universities are trying to lure top-flight academics to build up their international standing, is being linked to around the web.  But the thing that struck me about it was this paragraph:

 Similarly, Ge Jianxiong, a distinguished historical geographer at
Fudan, said Chinese culture often demands speedy results, which could
undermine research. "In China projects are always short-term, say three
years," he said. "Then they want you to produce a book, a voluminous
book. In real research you’ve got to give people the freedom to produce
good results, and not just the results they want."

    Since when was "Chinese culture" speedy?  It seems to me that it is much more common to characterize "Chinese culture" (I am using the scare quotes because it is such a large and contentious category), at least in its "traditional" forms (same reason for scare quotes) as slow.  After all, Confucius (Analects 2.4) tells  us that at fifteen he "set his mind to learning" but it was not until thirty that could "take my stand," and not until 40 that he "had no doubts," etc.  In other words, learning is a long, slow process, a life-long process.  From that perspective, why would we ever suppose that "speedy results" would be a good thing? 

    Now, this is all about the variable and malleable definition of "culture," not just "Chinese culture" but any culture.  We tend to create definitions of cultures based upon particular economic or political or social purposes.  When Western imperialists were traipsing about in the 19th century, shooting up the place and forcing Chinese to import opium, books were written about "Chinese characteristics" that defined Chinese as lazy and backward and heathen.  Fast forward one hundred and fifty years or so and we face the necessity of understanding an extraordinarily rapid economic transformation and, lo and behold, Chinese culture is found to facilitate capitalist growth – which was pretty much the opposite of what Max Weber was saying, and so on and so forth.

    Maybe it is true that research expectations in China today call for "speedy results," and maybe we can consider that a part of what "Chinese culture" is now.  But we should recognized that, in doing so, we are also implicitly accepting a notion of culture that is dynamic and changeable and hybrid.  We are, in effect, denying that there is some sort of authentic, unchanging "Chinese culture," which is OK by me (I believe culture is dynamic and I do not worry about "authenticity"), but I just wanted do make sure everyone else was on board…