Speech by Dai Bin at the Symposium Commemorating the 91st Anniversary of the Founding of the Communist Party of China and the Construction of Academic Achievements

On July 22, 2012, Dai Bin delivered a speech at the seminar commemorating the 91st anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China and the construction of academic achievements. The full text is as follows:

What academic achievements are needed in the era of mass tourism

Comrades: Listing seems like yesterday, but the research institute has solidly entered its fifth year. Looking back, although some achievements have been made, overall it has been five years of entrepreneurship and exploration. Entrepreneurship is difficult and involves numerous battles. Those who do not go through the process will find it difficult to understand their true intentions. Since the 2009 Leting Conference, it has become our tradition to discuss research institutes in conjunction with themed party day activities, which is also a directional issue for the construction of national tourism theory and the development of tourism disciplines. From discipline construction, talent cultivation, international growth to the concept of academic community, looking back, the development of the research institute in recent years has been guided by these common scientific research concepts or academic ideas. After addressing the development direction of academic institutions and the construction of cadres and talent teams, and undergoing several years of academic practice verification, the issue of academic achievement construction naturally came to the agenda. Strengthening the construction of academic achievements is a strategic requirement for the development goals of the research institute. We are an independent research institution with a government background. If we cannot establish ourselves as an "academic highland," our goals of being a "government think tank" and an "industry think tank" will lose their support. Academic achievements are the fundamental modules of academic highlands, as well as an effective manifestation of building an academic community and demonstrating social influence. From a practical perspective, the construction of academic achievements has become a necessary task for research institutes to transition from the preparatory construction period to the stable development period. After four years of construction and development, whether it is the Party group of the National Tourism Administration or various levels of tourism administrative departments; Whether it is the tourism system or various sectors of society, including the international community, the evaluation of us is basically positive and motivating. But what I am always worried about is that the core competencies for the survival and development of the research institute, especially the tourism development theoretical system with the characteristics of the research institute, have not been truly established. I don't know if you have the concern of 'under fame, it's actually difficult to live up to', but I do. Especially since its establishment, the national tourism academic community has been paying attention. Without high-level academic achievements, forward-looking construction ideas, and systematic action plans, how can we guide the cultivation and development of the tourism academic community? Relying solely on the background of the National Tourism Administration is obviously not enough, nor should it be relied upon, or in other words, it cannot be relied upon in terms of academic leadership. It is precisely out of strategic considerations for the development of tourism theory and practical concerns for the development of the research institute itself that the guiding documents for discipline construction, talent construction, internationalization construction, and academic community construction that have been discussed and determined since 2008 have naturally been extended. The institute has decided to make "Academic Achievement Construction" the theme of the 2012 Party Day activities. 1、 What kind of academic achievements do we need? What is academic achievement? What are the academic achievements we need? A clear answer must be given regarding the strategic direction for the long-term development of research institutes and the tourism academic community. The mainstream definition of academic achievements in academia and higher education is papers published in academic journals, monographs, translations, and textbooks, as well as research projects and reports from national and provincial natural, engineering, philosophy and social sciences, soft sciences, and other channels. Comrades from the research institute, especially the PhDs who have received professional training, are actually paying attention to these things as well. Since the 1990s, influenced by the academic orientation of the tourism industry in European and American countries, as well as the evaluation and ranking of professional titles and institutions within the system, the above standards have been increasingly strengthened in universities and research institutions. In extreme cases, a group of "form filling professors" and "targeted scholars" have emerged. Efforts should be made to strive for achievements that are conducive to the evaluation of professional titles, otherwise the assessment will be ignored. However, few people care about the academic essence issues related to development direction and talent growth. Now is the time to thoroughly reflect on this abnormal academic phenomenon. The overall orientation of academic research institutions, as well as the long-term pursuit of utilitarianism, technology, and quantity, will have major problems. I think academic achievements are nothing more than the formal expression of ideas, finding a carrier to facilitate the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge. We should value form, but we cannot rely solely on form. Many times, proposing a proposition or conjecture does not necessarily appear to be at a lower level than proving it through mathematical models. Chen Jingrun proved the Goldbach Conjecture, which is great, but the Goldbach who proposed the conjecture is not great? It doesn't seem like that. In the field of philosophy and social sciences, academic achievements cannot be narrowly defined. Nowadays, it is advocated to integrate multiple disciplines, promote interdisciplinary studies, and broaden one's horizons. Due to various reasons, research reports, lesson plans, commentary articles, and even some speculative texts that cannot be publicly published are not academic achievements?! I don't think it's just academic achievements in the eyes of those PhDs who have just come out of the ivory tower. Of course, as you have just entered the academic world, you still need to perform some moves to let people know that you have a master's degree and are not a wanderer. That's all you need. If after obtaining a senior professional and technical title, you still feel that non quantitative, non-public, and non journal texts are not academic achievements, then I can conclude that your knowledge is not great enough, and your attitude and realm of "not being a teacher but creating a culture" are not enough! Young Mao Zedong had served as a soldier and wore military uniform during his time in Jinggangshan. His military etiquette was also very standard, but after the end of the Long March, he stopped wearing it. When he met with generals, he would just gesture his hand in the upper right corner of his head. But who can say that Chairman Mao was not a great military strategist? A muscular haired young man cannot understand how to strategize and win in a great realm thousands of miles away. What kind of academic achievements are what we need and pursue? I think there are two main criteria for judgment. Firstly, it has theoretical and abstract explanatory power for the practice of the tourism industry, and secondly, it is an expression that readers are easy to accept and willing to accept. What you said makes sense, and he accepted it. I think the guiding role of theory in practice is a natural thing. The Communist Manifesto begins with a ghost, a communist ghost, hovering on the European continent. Then I'll tell you, when the bourgeoisie created themselves, they also created their gravedigger - the proletariat. In the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the proletariat only loses the chains and gains the whole world. Finally, proletarians of the world, unite more and more! Persuasion, infectiousness, and inspiration have all been gained. The ancient Chinese people emphasized the importance of logical reasoning, textual research, and rhetoric when writing articles, and the internal requirements were also the same. Zen Buddhism in China can be said to be the religion that is least like any other religion. It breaks idols, rules and even necessary practices, opposes the habitual logic of language and writing, and uses abnormal expressions such as "holding a hoe with bare hands, walking and riding a water buffalo" and "walking on a bridge without flowing water", emphasizing "the mind is Buddha" and "the ordinary mind is the way". That is to say, it is not a traditional religion, but rather an integration of its ideas into daily life. As a result, the construction of the spiritual world of traditional Chinese literati has had a significant impact on China's music, painting, literature, art, and social and political life, which is still in effect today, but we may not realize it. Of course, the readership of academic achievements is not only practitioners, but also members of the academic community themselves. Accumulating, inheriting, and innovating scientific theories in this field through intergenerational transmission, in academic practice, refers to papers published in SCI, SSCI, EI, ISTP, as well as publicly published monographs, translations, and textbooks. I do not deny the academic value of these achievements. In fact, academic evolution also requires the circuitous production mode discussed by Pangbavik in "The Empirical Theory of Capital", which is "using machines to produce machines". The current problem is that too many institutions and scholars are focusing on the "machine" in front of them, excessively pursuing the logical consistency of academic achievements and the feeling of pure academic research. The latter "machine", because of the need for real testing of industrial practice, or even a storm like test, because of the risk of complete failure, those scholars who are not clear about the direction, not firm in their will, and not solid in their foundation will be timid and shrink. Some people still use so-called academic norms to make excuses for their behavior and accuse those achievements oriented towards practice of being a wild path. I don't think these people and behaviors need to be ignored. What we need to do is to use our outstanding theoretical qualities and practical professional abilities to serve the tourism industry, promote national strategies, and build an academic achievement system with excellent theoretical abstraction, thus leaving our own voice in history. Is the more academic achievements the better? As the saying goes, it depends on the stage of personal growth of the scholar and the nature of the academic institution. When young people are just starting to grow up, they definitely need to make achievements. After all, when they are just starting their academic career, their direction is also unstable. It is necessary to explore more, and institutions are no exception. In the past, those who used to walk around the martial arts world would still form a circle, beat a few gongs and drums, and tell passersby, 'I'm here too.'. But after growing up, we need to focus on producing high-quality products and iconic achievements. By publishing a few papers, working on a few projects, winning a few awards, you can still establish yourself in the academic circle. However, if you want others to genuinely identify with you and leave a lasting impression in history, you must calmly produce a few achievements that are deeply imprinted with your personal brand. Don't make it sound like a leader's speech. If you erase the name, you won't be able to tell who wrote it. These achievements are not about quantity, nor do they care whether to publish or not, but they must have ideas and emotions. The matter of thoughts may seem unclear and inexplicable, but once the seeds are sown and people fall for it, it can be disastrous. Keynes once said, "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, whether they are right or wrong, are more powerful than commonly imagined. Indeed, the world is ruled by them. Practical people think they are not influenced by any theory, but they are often captives of a deceased economist." In terms of academia, in addition to individual achievements, we also emphasize the academic achievements of collective creation. The landmark achievement system of "18X" centered on the "Blue Book of Tourism Economy" is the crystallization of collective wisdom. There are also bi monthly issues of "Tourism Reference", irregular "Information Express", as well as special reports from the State Council and special tasks from the National Tourism Administration, which are projects that universities, private think tanks, and business consulting agencies cannot undertake. They are also the core academic products of the research institute. Although the task is not light, the deadline for submission and the psychological pressure are high, it has become an important support for the academic reputation of the research institute. If it accumulates for another ten or twenty years, it will be even worse. It is not only a historical document that promotes and witnesses the development of China's tourism industry, but also a Chinese characteristic "Tourism National Policy" that will be slightly sorted and published in the future. I think it has enlightening and reference significance for international tourism academic research. In this regard, we need to have a high degree of academic confidence and theoretical consciousness, and more importantly, a profound sense of history. 2、 How to build a tourism academic achievement system? The research institute is an academic institution, so we take "academic highland" as our strategic goal for construction. From the reply from the Central Compilation and Administration Office, it can be seen that government think tanks are the foundation for our survival and development. Comrades like Zhong Guang, Zi Qian, Xiao Yun, and a group of researchers who came from universities, including myself, felt that there were fewer academic works after arriving at the research institute. This is not surprising, whether it is an individual or an institution, their energy, time, and academic resources are limited. With more research on government countermeasures, the time for pure academic research naturally decreases. Everything has its pros and cons. In today's China, there is no academic institution as close to the temple as a research institute, and it is so convenient to access the earth's atmosphere, that is, we can obtain a huge amount of first-hand information. This requires us to plan carefully, work harder, and steadily promote the construction goals of "government think tanks, industry think tanks, and academic highlands" through conscious and creative transformation. One is the vertical transformation of horizontal projects, the other is the academic transformation of strategic research results, and there may also be issues with the international transformation of domestic achievements. Specifically, it means applying for the National Natural Science Foundation, National Social Science Foundation, and National Soft Science Foundation within the framework of tourism discipline construction, based on numerous local government projects, tourism enterprise projects, and international consulting projects, which helps to form corresponding academic directions. The implementation of one strategic and applied project after another, especially projects such as national tourist satisfaction, tourism economy monitoring and early warning, will form a huge and non renewable database, which can fully excavate and organize a large number of academic papers, monographs and other academic achievements. Comrade Qiongfeng from the Industry Institute has done a great job in this regard. Of course, relying solely on projects is not enough, theoretical abstraction and viewpoint enhancement are also needed. In conventional academic institutions and higher education institutions, people pay more attention to the practical application of academic achievements, mainly including social and economic benefits. In terms of social benefits, some educational and academic institutions explicitly stipulate that receiving instructions from Party and state leaders, competent department leaders, and local leaders is equivalent to a certain level of research topic or academic paper, in short, it is application-oriented. The main business of the research institute is to conduct research on countermeasures in the field of tourism, and there is no need to emphasize such indicators. In fact, after five years of development, a lot of materials in this area have been accumulated. The next step is how to do a good job in transformation based on rich first-hand data, cases, and related materials, so as to obtain the support of dialogue with academic institutions and scholars within the system, and lead the direction of international and domestic tourism academia in the dialogue. The policy institute has directly participated in the research and drafting of so many policy documents, whether it is the national tourism "12th Five Year Plan" development plan, the national tourism and leisure outline, or rural tourism, as well as in-depth and systematic research on local development models such as Zhejiang, Chengdu, and Yan'an. After several years of work, Comrade Ziqian, the information you possess, as well as the experience and knowledge you have, may no one in the Chinese tourism academic circle can surpass you. Can you systematically organize and take a step forward in the direction of tourism development theory, tourism policy design and performance evaluation, regional and international comparison of development models, etc? For example, applying for high-level social science research projects and publishing high-level research results on this basis. Of course, we cannot publish just for the sake of publication. We should have some ambitious goals and do some pioneering basic research work that is not meant to be a teacher but to create a new atmosphere. Including tourism, today's world is already a world of knowledge economy. In the era of rapid knowledge evolution and technological innovation, the research, drafting, implementation, and performance evaluation of economic and technological policies require us to follow the forefront of international disciplines on the basis of advancing and retreating together with the market and industry, while also striving for innovation in basic theories. There is a core issue in the field of applied economics of material capital, which is how to define and measure the value of "non-material" inputs contained in various investment projects? In the 1950s, Solow explored the concept of "surplus": "When two-thirds of national economic growth can be explained by changes in labor and material capital, the remaining one-third should be attributed to factors such as technological progress and innovation in resource allocation systems. The quantitative study of these non-material factors was not resolved by Denison, and was therefore referred to as' surplus surplus'. Later generations continued to conduct in-depth research on this basis. The growth drivers and operating mechanisms of tourism economy, macro policies and micro regulations on the tourism economic system