Although China began a process of reform and opening up more than 20 years ago, there has been little reform of the employment system in universities where lecturers are rarely laid off or demoted. This stagnant hiring system is markedly different from the employment system in many other sectors.

In 2003 Xu tried introducing a hiring and promotion regime at his university, under which lecturers would compete for a limited number of posts and those who failed would be demoted. The policy caused friction with staff members, who felt their posts threatened, especially associate professors and lecturers who had not produced much in the way of fruitful research. Under the new hiring regime, Peking University will headhunt from other universities.

While the reform was significant it was also prudent, undergoing 10 rounds of revision before being publicized online in order to solicit suggestions prior to a final draft being released in May 2003. It was praised as the most progressive reform since former president Cai Yuanpei's reforms 86 years before.

Xu said the reform program is in fact meant to carry on the legacy of Cai Yuanpei, whose courage to challenge the status quo Xu admired. In the early 20th century, Cai led all Chinese universities in synthesizing advanced university management

ideas from abroad, making Peking University a center for free and open scholarly thinking. "Many professors of original thinking were hired and the university even started to recruit female students for the first time," Xu said.

Cai abandoned the tradition of regarding education background as the qualification standard for hiring new professors when he employed Liang Shuming to teach Indian philosophy, despite the fact that Liang did not have a university degree. Cai hired two scholars with opposite views on Confucianism to voice their opinions in classes at the same time.

Xu also pointed out that as salaries rose as a proportion of overall costs, the university would not be able to afford to hire more talented people without a free flow of teaching staff. He refused to call his reforms "shock therapy," which he thought would not succeed in China's reforms. "We are conducting a gradual reform, which is intended to earn majority support," Xu said.

Xu also refuted the accusation that lecturers were eliminated from Peking University. "Some who failed to resume their positions in Peking University could do a good job in other posts or at other universities. Everyone should reasonably base their self-expectations on their capacity and specialty," Xu said.

A new trend is that universities are giving up the standard of evaluating teachers by the number of research papers they publish, which will help to unleash their potential in different fields. Wang Xiaoyun is a professor in the School of Mathematics and System Sciences of Shandong University, and one of the world's leading decoding experts who specializes in finding cracks in codes. She produced only one paper in eight years, but she was still promoted as a professor and recommended by her university to win national scientific prizes.

Jia Kegong, a professor at China Agricultural University, has been devoted to promoting the plantation of new breeds of fruit trees in rural areas for 17 years, which has brought a fortune to farmers. Although Jia failed to publish any research papers during the process, he was still granted a professorship last year.

Beyond the blackboard

Chen Zhangliang, President of China Agricultural University and a biological scientist, made his name for combining research achievements in the laboratory with production. Chen, who won the prestigious Javed Husain Prize for Young Scientists, given by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization for a biotechnology breakthrough, became Vice President of Peking University in charge of transforming lab results into products at the age of 34. In the following seven years before he became the head of China Agricultural University, he brought in 16.5 billion yuan for Peking University.

"Scientific research in labs is as important as the promotion of technology in the field. After all, rice cannot be cultivated on the blackboard," said Chen.

As head of China Agricultural University, he has embarked on reversing the practice of "weighing scientific research over technology in promotion." He has initiated a project to select 10 lecturers to promote new agricultural technologies full time, who will be appraised on the number of new technologies they teach farmers rather than the number of papers they publish.

Chen even said a major task for a university president is to find more financing channels. "Only with money can you attract more talent. Then the new recruits can independently do research and plan their teaching, without interference from university management. So the president's role is largely supportive, trying to put laboratory research into improving productivity," he said.