Growing up in the US in a blue-collar family I saw my father work two jobs and my mother work part-time. This was in the "prosperous" 1960s and 70s. In my family, I was first to graduate from college and until I entered graduate school, China was a closed land. Never did I imagine that I would one day be a dean at Tianjin University and recipient of China's Friendship Award for bringing international liberal education reforms to its higher education system.

As a child, my favorite part of US history was the constitutional period, a time when all energy was placed into building a new nation and political discussion focused on what would be the appropriate, just and sustainable form of governance to guide the nation into a new century with the explicit mission to "promote general welfare". The recent opening of China also offers the possibility to address such questions, albeit in a different context and from a different point of origin. Perhaps that is what drew me to the challenge of coming to China's Tianjin University in 2013, to be the first foreign science dean within a National 985 (a Chinese project for founding world-class universities in the 21st century) university and to head up a government-backed demonstration project with a specific mission to internationalize higher education in China.

When looking into core social values of common people, dreams matter. The dreams of American and Chinese families have more commonalities than differences. The vast majority of working people of China and the US get up everyday and strive to keep their homes safe and sound, put food on the table and create enough wealth to make the next generation a little better off than the last.

The American Dream, articulated in its constitution, desires "to form a more perfect union with the characteristics of justice, liberty, security, tranquility and welfare". Xi Jinping, in his 19th CPC report, articulated China's Dream as one of rejuvenating the nation through an opening where the well-being of the people is the fundamental goal of development. He highlighted key issues of focus to be justice, personal fulfillment, social harmony, national security and common prosperity. Considered in juxtaposition, there emerges a remarkably parallel sense of mission for the American and Chinese dreams.

Governance of the people, for the people and by the people was not without criticism at the time. Jefferson made the caveat clear: only a well-informed citizenry can represent the considered opinion of the majority and still protect the rights of the minority. As such, education was a top priority. Education is also at the heart of Chinese social philosophy as expressed by Mencius' admonition that benevolent governance must first provide people with a good education. Be it east or west, promotion of the general welfare and pursuit of social dreams start with an empowering education.

The American dream also embodies a multicultural character that supports an American identity blending ethnic pride and national loyalty. One can identify with one's roots, while feeling fully American. Few countries offer this special character of individuality and integration. This original American feature highlights the success of America's open all-comers history.

The American pioneer spirit that a positive future lays outside of where I live today and beyond what I know at this moment projects an optimistic “can-do” attitude. Liberal education comprising appreciation of cultural heritage, artistic creation, scientific discovery, and engineering application serves well such an open and diverse personal social philosophy. Such an education that balances mastery, inquiry and artistry also harmonizes with a human sensibility for personal freedom and social order. It empowers the individual in her/his struggle to know and to create for the betterment of all. These features are what for nearly 200 years have made western liberal research universities the envy of the world.

China's dream since Deng Xiaoping looks to achieve economic prosperity through industrialization and a more open society; however, China’s interest in national rejuvenation through industrial revolution and internationalization traces back to 1895 and the establishment of Peiyang University as China's first modern university. At the time China's universities did not prepare China for the Industrial Revolution that had been raging for nearly a century in Europe and the US. Peiyang University, the brain child of Chinese entrepreneur Sheng Xuanhuai and American educator Charles Tenney broke with many educational traditions, by focusing on science and practical arts of mining, engineering and law under the motto seek truth through facts. Moreover, it adopted occidental perspectives to create an international university with Chinese characteristics. It followed in many ways the American model.

At its inception Peiyang's reputation comprised foreign talent, English language and multilateral internationalization. Recruiting broadly without regard to origin and cooperating actively with the great universities of the day, Peiyang scholars innovated for China industries in automation, aviation, telecommunications, mining and civil engineering. Open exchanges, diversity and inclusiveness proved to be the best way to raise the stature and performance of the university. Soon after many Chinese universities followed the Peiyang reforms. Today, Tianjin University is Peiyang University's direct descendant.

After 40 years, modernization of manufacturing in China's Pearl River Delta has become the world reference for the reforms of Deng Xiaoping. In this region, positive international influences have been strong and the special economic zones have had fantastic economic success; however, the level of scholarship lagged behind and China outsourced its higher education needs, trading low-cost labor for state-of-the-art know-how.

From 1980-2010, China's largest-valued natural-resource export was human talent who got their training in the US and EU and then decided to remain and build their careers and families abroad, the modern day hua qiao (overseas Chinese). Already at the millennial transition, many began to convert to hai gui (returning overseas Chinese) and brought back open attitudes, innovative ideas, and practical methodologies learned abroad. Today the flux of Chinese students going abroad and Chinese scholars returning home is at a staggering rate. The information China retrieves by repatriation of hai gui talents constitutes the greatest trade imbalance of modern times, but could also be the strongest accelerant of China's opening process.

In the last decade, strategies for continued Chinese opening through global engagement have stepped up pace. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the most significant of these strategies. BRI embodies aspects of America's Manifest Destiny, Monroe Doctrine, Transcontinental Railroad, Panama Canal and Interstate Highway campaigns. Whereas the process took around 150 years in the US, China is looking to achieve China's Dream in a couple of decades; however, China's universities are not yet ready to support fully BRI. In response, China has commenced its double first class university and new engineering science program to compete at the highest end of the international higher education sector.

World-class universities play a significant role in campaigns like BRI because international universities excel by bringing together talent independent of origin. They thrive on multiculturalism and multicultural fluency, which is what BRI needs to succeed. BRI may inspire patriotic sentiments, but patriotism at its best must unify and integrate multilateral factions for a common good. The flow of the historical river has always been defined by unification, from 13 American colonies to the United Nations there is strength in unity. Be it 3 kingdoms, 13 colonies, or 193 member-states, multilateral unification, not isolationism, strengthens and protects the welfare of nations.

The future favors more "supranational" experiments like the EU and ASEAN, two key partner unions in the BRI concept. These unions require dreams that motivate a common sense of mission beyond interests of ethnicity, gender or race. Ultimately, the success of BRI will depend on China's dream evolving into a regional dream that integrates a mixed cultural/national identity. Comprehensive universities offer a venue for high-level social discourse that will enable this cultural integration.

Global transportation, information and social networks show that no two countries are truly isolated from one another. At the same time, global commerce and distributed manufacturing tightly couples the wealth of nations. Old views of rivalry and competition are no longer tenable. Issues of mass immigration and terrorism have much to do with a neglect of this global connectedness of social welfare. Responsible global leadership must craft a global dream to promote the general welfare with peaceful development along the historical lines of American or Chinese Dreams. A humanity capable of manifold identity sees that identity politics has no better claim in multiculturalism than does "me first". It finds no boundary to developing a communal identity beyond biological, religious, ethnic, national and professional heritage. It is the mission of world-leading universities to provide the milieu out of which this next generation of enlightened leader rise.

Leaders who reject a global dream in the name of placing their nations first actually place their citizens at risk by ignoring the fact that the unified wealth among collective nations can no longer be stably dissected into the wealth of individual nations. Building physical walls, waging trade wars and levying economic sanctions obstruct the vital global discussion of best practices toward world prosperity and global sustainability. Leading universities must leverage the supranational fellowship of scholars to maintain an active dialogue on issues of changing global society and identification of cross-cultural core values.

The Asian philosophy of yin/yang offers a useful platform for discussion. Yin/yang philosophy is part of traditional medicine and the maintenance of a healthy life balance. It represents a balance of opposing elements and the paradoxical minor component of each in the other. The socially relevant discussion of social order vs personal freedom embodies this balance of inseparable parts; and, questions of primacy of the individual vs the community is well viewed as a yin/yang relationship balancing the health of our planet.

An individual as part of a community enjoys benefits that allow her/himself to express individual creativity in ways that would be impossible in isolation; a community that includes diversity and encourages individual contributions enjoys a better adaptability and therefore sustainability. In protecting the right of my neighbor to express his/her individuality I protect my own. As such, a strong commitment to diverse and inclusive individualism promotes the community welfare as long as egotism is kept in check and no one is too big to fail or big enough to take all.

Global public health and medicine draw benefits from advances across the scholastic spectrum and therefore benefit greatly from the culture of open borders and scholarly exchanges. The free migration of students, scholars and ideas has always generated new facts, methods and cultures that raised the level of public health and medicine. In a key example, knowledge of various microorganisms, methods to treat impotable water, and the expanding culture of public hygiene, collectively have brought many diseases under control; the results have come from diverse intellectual and national backgrounds. The future welfare of all nations will also benefit from new knowledge, independent of point of origin, in areas like AI and neuroscience, new skills like molecular diagnostics and functional imaging, and acquired cultural habits like better nutritional choices and daily health status monitoring. China's 1.4 billion people have much to gain from open multilateral participation in the world's health science development and equally much to contribute.

Returning to the concept of national dreams, it should be clear that common citizens of every country dream in similar shapes and colors. Extreme imbalance in the realization of those dreams raises the probability of socially destabilizing behavior. Defecting from the global partnership or setting a course of "me first" can at best have short-term benefits by cheating on the generosity of the international community of nations, but in the long term creates higher risk for catastrophic losses. Ultimately, it is through shared dreams and well-educated citizens that nations can create common purpose and insure global welfare.

Jay S. Siegel rose through the professorial ranks at UC San Diego, then moved to UZH, where he served as Dean of Studies and Head of the Research Council for the Faculty of Sciences. He relocated to Tianjin University in 2013 and joined the Schools of Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences into a new Health Science Platform. 

This article is selected from a book, The Sleeping Giant Awakes, jointly published by China Daily’s communication-led think tank China Watch and Guangdong People's Publishing House.

The author contributed this article to China Watch exclusively. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of China Watch.

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