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Chinese scholar to lead research at Oxford

Xiaolan Fu.... “India and China are evolving in different directions.”

At a time when the buzz is all about India-China “rivalry,” with the two countries being portrayed as rivals in the race for global supremacy, Oxford University has attempted to buck the trend by bringing Indian and Chinese academics together to explore issues around industrialisation and development.

Xiaolan Fu, a Chinese Indologist who trained under Indian economist, V.N. Balasubramanyam, will lead the research as head of the university’s newly-established Sanjaya Lall Programme for Technology and Management for Development.

The programme, which will focus on research into technology and development in emerging countries, is named after a leading India-born Oxford professor of development economics who died three years ago. Sanjaya Lall was regarded as an authority on globalisation and its consequences.

Dr. Fu, who specialises in developing Asian economies and has worked extensively on India, especially on investment issues, will collaborate with Indian academics — both at Oxford and in India — on a range of areas including India’s alarming “digital divide.”

“We will also develop cutting-edge research on the managerial capabilities needed to compete in the globalising world and the role of technology in meeting the challenges of climate change and sustainable development,” she told The Hindu.

The programme will take off with a project to improve e-services for farmers in India. Next month, researchers from Oxford will join an international team in Sironj, Madhya Pradesh, to provide computer and mobile phone technology to farming communities. They will work with local volunteers to reach out to farmers in remote areas.

Dr. Fu said that under the project, mobile phones would be distributed to farmers’ representatives known as “Munnas,” who would respond to requests from local farmers when they need advice on plants that are looking sickly or crops that are not growing well.

“The Munnas will take photographs of plants on their mobile phones and transmit those images to the agricultural experts for an immediate response. Without this technology, advice on crop failures and pest problems can take days as the agricultural advisers travel from village to village on bicycles if they need to look at problematic plants and crops. The computer technology will enable farmer cooperatives to tap into e-services, such as online banking, or current data on supply prices and market demand. We see this project as a test-bed for other similar schemes to be replicated nationally in India, as well as in other parts of the world,” she said.

The Sanjay Lall Programme, which is funded by a number of international organisations such as the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), already has half-a-million pounds in the kitty but is looking for more money and India is seen as a potential donor.

Dr. Fu said she would be looking to India both for funds and for academic collaboration. It is one of the issues she hopes to raise with Indian authorities when she visits New Delhi in the autumn to attend a conference on sustainable development.

“We will like India to support us — by offering grant and facilitating joint research with Indian institutions and individual scholars,” she said.

As a part of Oxford University’s Department of International Development, which has links with Jawaharlal Nehru University, the programme already has an Indian connection but Dr. Fu would like more Indian research institutions such as the IITs to “come on board.”

Dr. Fu avoids talking about political issues but, when pressed, she agrees that some of the western perceptions about India and China are flawed. She rejects criticism that outsourcing of certain services and manufacturing goods to India and China is “distorting” labour market in the west. On the contrary, the west is benefiting from the availability of cheap Indian and Chinese labour.

“Cheap labour-intensive services provided by India and labour-intensive goods like clothes and toys produced in China are benefiting consumers in the west, though in some sectors things might be different. The story is more complicated than what we hear,” she says.

Dr. Fu also resents the notion that China is a “closed society” where no dissent is allowed. It might have been true “once upon a time,” she says, but no, not any more.

“Internet is full of criticism and even jokes about bureaucracy and government actions. The media is free to criticise the government’s economic policies and, contrary to the impression abroad, there is also a lot of academic freedom. Yes, political dissent remains a no-go area but gradually things will change. I am quite optimistic,” she says.

And does she see India and China as rivals?

“Oh, no, no,” she laughs. “The two countries are evolving in different directions — India as a provider of services and China as a source of manufacturing. And both can complement each other.”

Dr. Fu came to Britain 10 years ago as a young student and stayed on, though she visits China at least once a year.

“There have been dramatic changes in China and every time I go back I notice things are getting better and better,” she says.

And, like all immigrants, she hopes to return home for good one day.

Surprisingly, despite her deep interest in India and her academic links with it Dr. Fu has never been there, and is looking forward to her first-ever visit to that country in September. India, as an idea, fascinates her. Will she find the reality as seductive? Well, she’ll soon find out.

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