In the late 1970s, Deng Xiaoping made a visit to Japan and re established relations with the Japanese
He was fascinated by the High Speed Trains, the Roads and the Rapid Industrialization of the Nation
He found that the key for all this was an *ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICS BASE in Education*
He went back home and incorporated some critical things in the SIXTH PLENARY CONGRESS in 1981 after managing to push out Hua Guofeng
*These included :-*
Build a Force of Secondary Teachers who could teach Mathematics
Change the Education System with higher emphasis on Mathematics & Physics instead of History & Political Science & Ideology (As was the case until 1979)
Delete all Chapters on Japanese Atrocities from Chinese History (From 15 Chapters to 1/2 a Chapter]
Begin the PRC Scholarship to send Students to be trained as Engineers and Teachers in Four Nations – USA, UK, Canada and Japan (In 1982 – the first 120 students were sent, today there are nearly 50,000 Students who get awarded the annual scholarships)
Change the Three Year Course of Science subjects to the 54 month course where the last 18 months involved mandatory rural teaching to introduce Maths to Rural China
To incorporate *ENGINEERING* in Agriculture & Farming
He targeted 2011 as a year when China would become a Core Industrial Nation with Large Scale Engineering Expertise next to none
*He called it the Thirty Year Dream*
Luckily his successors had the same mindset
Jiang Zemin made more changes to the Education System and introduced Mining and Metallurgy as an Engineering Discipline in 1993
He okayed bringing in Professional Engineers as Project Consultants from Canada, UK, Israel, Japan and Singapore in 1991
Until then a Lot of Old Communists felt very strongly about bringing in capitalist outsiders
Jiangs greatest legacy was that unlike Deng who believed 50,000 Great Engineers a year was good for China
Jiang believed 400,000 Mid Level Engineers were EVEN BETTER for China
He signed the University Expansion Project in 1994
Annual Engineering Places rose from 200K to nearly 800K in a mere 10 years
Xi Jingping focused on Fine Engineering and Micro Engineering and has seen the workforce for this rise from 19,000 in 2010 to an estimated 238,000 in 2024
*His target is 1 Million by 2035*
However Engineers couldn’t have kept coming had it not been for Chinas decision to become a Factory of Cheap Goods for 2 1/2 Decades (1986–2011) and establish an Industrial Base
The DEMAND created more and more Engineers
The Money was used to enhance Engineering Objectives and introduce Research & Development
In 1987 China began their first State Research Fund with the equivalent of $ 3 Million a year, in 2023 this sum for $ 366 Billion a year
*So the Answer is : L E A D E R S H I P* &
*M E R I T O C R A C Y*
That’s the formula for becoming a Great Civilization
*NOTE*
Nigeria can get ahead of every other nation in Africa if we stop our fixation with regionalism, godfatherism, Accumulation of Wealth through Corruption, and Desperation for Political Power. *Let us orchestrate an Education Revolution with emphasis on STEM, starting now.*
Let our President, Governors and Intellectuals organize Conferences for this, not for politics. Let us mobilize the whole nation for this.
Please take our Nation out of poverty and backwardness. Wake up the giant in us. Make Nigeria one of the Ten Leading Nations in the World (in Technology, Wealth and Clout) by 2045.
PJD
