The Potential for Technology Education in People's Republic of China

With the rapid development of society and economics in the People's Republic of China, the importance of technology education has been gradually recognized by both the government and people of China. China has benefited in many areas, including science and technology, since China opened her nation's gates to the industrialized western countries. China and the United States signed a memorandum of agreement to launch three satellites (Chen, 1990). The U. S. government has recently issued a license for shipment of these three satellites to China. The successful launching of AsiaSat-1, a satellite manufactured by the Hughes Aircraft Company for the Asia Satellite Telecommunication Corporation, marked the beginning of China's entry into the international satellite telecommunication market. Technologies in other areas, such as nuclear energy, superconductors, high-energy accelerators, advanced new computers, and robots to serve mankind, have also represented significant breakthroughs in Chinese science and technology. With the increased pace of scientific and technological development, technology education in the mainland of China has new potential. For example, the Odyssey of the Mind program (OM, called Olympics of the Mind in China), created by Dr. C. Samuel Micklus of New Jersey of the United States in 1978, has been adopted by the Chinese educational system. The first OM competition at the secondary school level in China was held in Beijing in March, 1990 (Kong, 1990). It was organized by the Chinese magazine, “Secondary School Students.” Almost all schools are public schools in the socialist China. According to 1987 statistics, there were 807,400 elementary schools with 128,358,000 pupils in the mainland of China. Although 69.04% of the elementary school graduates were admitted to junior high school, only 31.14 of junior high grad-