Wuxi: Canal city in transition

 

Wuxi started to industrialize shortly after China's door was opened by Western powers, led by many "national capitalists" with backgrounds of being well-educated local gentry and enterprising farmers.

In the early part of the 20th century, a large number of industrialists in the Yangtze Delta, including Shanghai, claimed their roots in Wuxi.

One example was Rong Yiren (1916-2005), founding chairman of the financial conglomerate Citic Group, one of the largest of its kind in China.

Rong was born and first inherited family industries in Wuxi. Dubbed the "red capitalist" of China, he gave important advice to Deng Xiaoping, chief architect of Chinese reform and opening-up, and was vice-president of the People's Republic of China from 1993 to 1998.

The spirit of entrepreneurship has remained alive in the city, even during the period when central planning of the economy was its most acute in China from the mid-1960s to the 1970s. Beginning in the 1970s, cast-off machines from Shanghai's State-owned enterprises were salvaged by local farmers to make extra income for their villages.

When the reform and opening-up became the country's official policy, Wuxi and surrounding communities had already accumulated large numbers of mechanics, craftsmen and even officials capable of arranging services for business development. Local officials and businesspeople have been working closely together since.

But to lift the city's overall economy to an entirely new level required more than just a rich commercial tradition. In this time of the knowledge economy, Wuxi needs a better-educated generation of entrepreneurs and managers capable of nurturing more skills and innovations - as well as the individuals who possess those skills and the ability to bring forth the innovations.

How could Wuxi find such people, was the question. How could it, as just one of the dozen or so industrial towns in the Yangtze Delta and one without nationally acclaimed universities, build a large advantage in high-quality human resources? This was the challenge posed by the city's inevitable business transition following a massive closedown and evacuation of polluting factories in 2007.

Wuxi did not have a major university until 2001, when several colleges - the major of which specialized in light industrial engineering - were merged into what is now Jiangnan University.

The city's older entrepreneurs either received their education elsewhere - Rong Yiren went to college in Shanghai, at Saint John's University, run by the Episcopal mission - or never had much formal education.