Students attending a lecture of economics at the Eberhard Karls University in Tuebingen, Germany. AP

WHICH country - the United States or China - will make the 21st century its own?

When US President Barack Obama recently called for American young people "to be makers of things" and to focus on subjects such as science and engineering, it was partly a nod to China's rapid growth. Had he lived and taught in China for the last 33 months, as I have, he might have urged US students to follow his example and study the liberal arts.

Only technical knowledge coupled with well-developed critical and creative thinking skills can help us regain our innovative edge. China's traditional lack of emphasis on teaching these skills could block its efforts to develop its own innovative economy.

I once had my Chinese MBA students brainstorm on "two-hour business plans". I separated them into six groups, gave them detailed instructions and an example: a restaurant chain. The more original their idea, the better, I said - and we'd vote for a prize winner.

Laptops flew open. Fingers pounded. Voices roared. In the end, five of the six groups presented plans for, you guessed it, restaurant chains. The sixth proposed a catering service.

Though I admitted the time limit had been difficult, I expressed my disappointment and said once more what I had expected - originality - and why.

My students weren't recent college grads. They were middle managers, financial analysts and financiers from State-owned enterprises and multinational companies. Most were intelligent men and women. They were not without talent or opinions, but they had been shaped by an educational system that rarely stressed or rewarded critical thinking or inventiveness.

The scene I just described came in different forms during my two years at the school. Papers were often copied from the Web and the Harvard Business Review. Case study debates that were meant to be spontaneous were written up together by teams that were supposed to be against each other and were memorized. Students frequently said that copying is a superior business strategy, better than inventing and innovating. When they thought about the wealth that Chinese industry gained in such a short time, it was hard for them to believe otherwise.

In China, highways, dams and airports have been built. Every product you can imagine has been made and sold. But so few well-developed marketing and management minds have been raised that it will be a long time before most people in the world can name a Chinese brand.

With this problem in mind, partnerships with institutions like Yale, MIT and France's Insead have been established. And then there's the "thousand-talent scheme": this new government program is intended to boost technological innovation by luring top foreign-trained scientists to the mainland with big money.

But there are worries about China's research environment. It's hardly known for producing independent thinking and openness, and even big salary offers may not be attractive enough to overcome this.

Ultimately, for China, becoming a major world innovator is not just about setting up partnerships with top Western universities. Nor is it about gathering a group of elite people and telling them to think creatively. It's about establishing an intellectually rich learning environment for young minds.

Randy Pollock is a former University of Southern California lecturer, who consults with companies on communication and management issues in China.

It's not that simple

DOES Chinese education kill thinking or are the Chinese that way by nature? Los Angeles Times readers have varying views on the issue:

Based on my liberal arts education, while that environment encourages a lot of thinking outside the box, most of the people there are no different to those who don't have that background. Humans are creatures of habit but have nearly limitless potential to go beyond the accepted. Daniel

I've worked with many Chinese-born/trained engineers. The biggest problem hasn't been their lack of technical expertise. Instead, the biggest problem has been the lack of technical understanding by American-born/trained managers.

Kristin

The assumption that the American worldview is superior is without support. America's clever marketing minds certainly lead to higher profits, but is any real value being created? "Brand" is just another way of saying "something made more expensive than it should be because of marketing." Don't buy the hype, China.

Heather

Almost none of my students are interested in understanding the materials critically. Most of them are just looking for a good grade. Compared with some of the public schools in the US where so much is spent with so few results, the education system in China is not so bad.
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