The third speaker in the panel I moderated at the STS conference was Fei Guo from Southeast University in Nanjing, China and the University of Wisconsin-Madison who spoke about The Absense of Engineering Ethics in China and its Solutions: An STS Perspective.
Fei began by explaining there are no engineering ethics in China. As a sub-discipline, the term specifies the responsibilities of engineers as professionals. However, most interesting to many of us in the room was hearing about the difference between how engineers are perceived in the U.S. and China. In Chinese tradition with roots in Confucius philosophy, engineers ‘build‘ rather than ‘design‘ and the profession is largely ignored. Hence, he described an absence of engineering books and courses.
Fei believes that given the modernization of China, engineering ethics must be introduced. He outlined a model to do so based on the example of the transformation from microethics to macroethics in U.S. engineering and the developments of STS. His proposal includes:
1) Highlighting engineering studies and practice, demonstrating creative characteristics in engineering
2) Introducing a general curriculum to popularize the multiple images of engineering and building macroethics in engineering education
3) Reforming the Chinese library and publication system, thereby encouraging publication and broader distribution of general engineering works.
While this is not an topic I’m familiar with, it raises some intriguing questions about persistence of S&T fields and definitions in other parts of the world. Is globalization moving us toward standardization? Probably. Does it matter?
April 2nd, 2009 at 1:14 pm
If engineering is largely ignored, who builds all those booming skyscrapers, bridges and highways in China? Is it mostly foreign engineering?
April 2nd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Interesting. As an aside, what surprised me most at the Great Wall was how precarious the steps are. They’re uneven, sloped, sometimes very narrow. Going up not too bad. However it was terrifying walking down with our baby.
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:09 am
[...] China, stemming from Confucianism, engineers “Build” rather than “Design”. So the engineering profession doesn’t have the same status there. There are few [...]
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:23 pm
They’ll change little by little; they need to in order to adapt to commerce with the rest of the world. Personally I don’t think the confucian philosophy has anything to do with controlling engineering credentials, but people who build things build up a reputation today just as their counterparts did 2000 years ago. See so-and-so if you want a really nice house etc; the strength of structures and so on rarely come to mind.
You can find many people offering non-functional products because many people have the attitude “if it looks right it must be right”. For example, screwdrivers made of chrome-plated copper – they’re long, have a flat blade, and they’re a shiny silver color – what more could you want? Many people have a very poor understanding of material properties and tooling, but this is not necessarily the case with people who have a university degree.
There are good engineers – they’re just in fairly short supply as in any other part of the globe. I certainly don’t envy their challenge to bring legislation and industry practices up to date though; they’re up against 2000 years or more of bad habits and bosses typically have an imperial attitude to things – the boss is never wrong, no matter how wrong he is.