On May 8^th 2013, Prof. Liu Baocheng was invited to give a lecture on “Personal Development and National Competitive” to the workshop for presidents of the finance and trade universities in developing countries, which was hosted by the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China, co organized by the School of Continuing Education at the University of International Business and Economics.

       

Beginning from the importance of Personal Development, Prof. Liu pointed out that both of the development and progress of person and country are closely related with the development of education. Prof. Liu believed that people’s competences were divided into four stages from bottom to top: skills, knowledge, attitude and philosophy (values). The idea was also shared by Chinese education system, which has been advocating the full round development of morality, intelligence and physique.

Prof. Liu interpreted Human Development Index issued by UNDP and Global Competitive Index issued by WEF, and gave further interpretation of challenges faced by China and other developing countries in the transformation period: although we all agree with the importance of education, it’s hard to invest heavily in education because of its time-consuming and slow effect. The good news is that, because of the development of economic in China, the level of people’s life has been improved a lot, and the average life expectancy increases while the illiteracy rate dropped significantly. However, we should also recognize that only by deepening reform can we build more effective competition mechanism, ensure the efficient flow of the talent market, and solve the upcoming aging problems, and make our country develop orderly and healthily.