Sina Science and Technology News on the morning of January 17, it was reported that the 2016 annual meeting of the Future Forum was held this morning. The annual meeting invited elites and people of insight from all walks of life, such as global science, economy, education, art, politics, to share the achievements of human wisdom. At the same time, it will create the first Nobel level award initiated by the people in China - "Future Science Award".
Baidu Robin Li, the founder of the company, delivered a keynote speech on the topic of "How China leads global innovation". Robin Li said that China needs to overcome two difficulties to become an innovative country. One is language; The second is cultural inclusiveness.
Li Yanhong also said that the past week was a special period for Baidu. The company will reflect deeply and turn crisis into opportunity, hoping that Baidu can go further with you. (Xu Li)
The following is the full text of Li Yanhong's speech:
Li Yanhong: Good morning, everyone. Like Ding Jian, those who started the Future Forum a year ago did not expect to gather so many outstanding scientists and entrepreneurs today. Especially today, such a conference was completely full, with 2500 people registering for the 800 person venue. It has really aroused the interest of many people. Today, I'm the first to say that you also know that the past week has been a very special week for Baidu. Thank you for your concern, and we will also reflect very deeply, hoping to turn crisis into opportunity, so that Baidu can go further with you.
In fact, today's forum has a lot to do with the future, and it has a lot to do with the future. The theme of the forum is the century that human beings have known. On this occasion, everyone wants to open their minds to think about something more long-term, to discuss the future, to discuss the future of science, to discuss the future of technology, to discuss the future of the country, to discuss the future of the nation, Why are so many people so interested in this matter and long-term things now. In fact, I think there is a prerequisite that the era we live in today is very different from that of a hundred years ago. One hundred years ago, China was probably the weakest country in the world, although it was also a big country. Today, we should say that we are in a golden age. Only when you are in a golden age, can there be so many people with such a mood and such an ideal to do something long-term for our younger generation and human beings.
So one topic I want to talk about today is a topic that I have been thinking about for a long time. How can China's innovation ability be further improved, and how can China, not only a big country, but also an innovative country, have a strong enough position in the field of global innovation, even a leading position.
I'm thinking that we have many difficulties to overcome in order to achieve this. The biggest two are language. Language is an experience that we all have. That is to say, when you are studying, whether in middle school or college, you spend a lot of time learning English. When I was in college, I probably spent about one third of my time learning English, taking the TOEFL test and GRE. When I learned, I thought that the world was too unfair. Americans didn't need to learn English, and I didn't need to spend so much time learning a language when I was in college. However, we Chinese, non English speakers, especially non Latin speakers, all have weaknesses in this area. We have to spend more time than others to learn what others are born with, which consumes a lot of our time.
Related to this is culture. Up to now, most of our working languages in Chinese enterprises are Chinese, which leads to a problem. If the world's best talents come to China, it is difficult for them to stay here comfortably and for a long time. Because he doesn't understand the language.
Our Chinese culture, in fact, I said the second obstacle is that our Chinese culture is not so inclusive at present. China is not a country of immigrants. Of course, in the past, we may have too many people and have control. But on the whole, the world's outstanding talents are willing to send them to Silicon Valley, He felt that it was not only the center of global innovation, but also that everyone spoke the same language, English. In China, we couldn't do that. In fact, it's not that we haven't tried. For example, Baidu has recruited many overseas returnees and other people with international backgrounds. When they first entered our company, they wrote in English when communicating by email. After two months, they basically write Chinese. This environment is very strong in Chinese. This culture is very Chinese.
Not only Chinese enterprises, in fact, I know of a Japanese enterprise, Japan's largest e-commerce company, called Rakuten. His founder had similar observations, so he forced all employees of Lotte to use English as their working language. But I see that the effect is not particularly obvious. His entire culture and the environment of his employees still make it difficult for everyone to have such inclusiveness, and it is difficult to attract the world's best talents to enter such a culture. This is what I see. We in China face language barriers and cultural barriers if we want to become truly innovative and lead the transition. At the same time, I also saw that we have advantages in innovation. There are things that others do not have, especially the past 40 years of reform and opening up. I think the reason why China has been able to have such a long period of sustained and rapid economic growth is very related to the concept of "first try, first try". When things are not clear, we are an environment that allows you to try and make mistakes. This leads to many things that can be done quickly in China. Building a building can be done quickly. High speed railway can be the best and most developed railway transportation system in the world.
For example, what Baidu is doing now is driverless cars. On the one hand, it needs a lot of technology and innovation, and a long time of investment and effort. But at the same time, it is also such a thing that will change the existing pattern. So we can see that there are also companies in the United States and in Europe that are doing this. But we have seen that in these countries, especially in the United States, there are not only differences in technology, but also disputes on the road. There are also many disputes in law and ethics. For example, a question many people are asking is how to choose when an unmanned car needs to make a choice, when it goes left to kill a child and right to kill an old person, It seems to us that the debate about who is responsible for this result is of little significance. Even one person can't make a good judgment. Now we need a very early, very infant driverless car technology to make such judgments. It is too demanding.
I believe that China will not have so many such requirements, which will enable many innovations to have more opportunities for trial and error in China, and we may be in the forefront of world innovation.
Therefore, I think China has an advantage in the first try, which is of great value to innovation. Of course, we also have an advantage that the world does not have. It is a huge fashion in China. There are more than 700 million Internet users in China. Our population of more than one billion may be the largest single market in the world. It has not always been the same before. If the population is the same, it is almost any field, our Internet field, and even other traditional industries. When we look at this head, This market is the largest market.
With the largest market, you have many opportunities to try, try, and innovate. We first encountered problems that we did not encounter elsewhere. So we should have the opportunity to think first and find solutions first. The generation of solutions is actually the process of innovation.
So I think the concept of "first try in the huge market" will be two very important advantages of China in the future innovation.
So, if we want to make China a truly innovative country, we should develop our strengths and give full play to our strengths in these areas on the one hand, and avoid our weaknesses on the other hand, or make up for our weaknesses on the other. How can we make our language and cultural shortcomings less obvious. In fact, I know that Peking University has a project called Yanjing School, which is to attract students from all over the world to study in China, to study in Peking University, and to study here for a master's degree after graduating from college. This major is called Chinese Studies. In fact, what I come here to study is not the most important thing, but the most important thing is that all the food and accommodation fees are included. In this way, outstanding talents from all over the world can come to China to contact Chinese culture, Chinese and our language when they are very young. This will give these people some opportunities. When they want to enter the field of work, they should contact to see if they can make some good things in China. So in the future, maybe we entrepreneurs should fund more good universities, let them provide good scholarships to foreign people, people from all over the world, and let them study in China. In this way, they will be educated in China, understand Chinese language and culture, and have more opportunities to do things here in the future. This is the first thing I can make up for.
The second one actually has a lot to do with the awards we are going to release this afternoon. We need to do some scientific awards to reward those innovations in China. This is also an attraction for all kinds of talents. It makes people think that doing Science has face, respect and future. We can do all these things.
Of course, at the cultural level, at the language level, we still have a lot to try and imagine. Every entrepreneur here should consider such a problem. Maybe one day China will become such a language, maybe it will become a more open culture than now. People from all walks of life and all ethnic groups are willing to come to China, They are willing to do what they want to do here, so this is what we can do. What we can do is so-called cross-border. These people here today really represent a very, very many different fields. More exchanges and collisions between people in these different fields together are also very important for promoting innovation. In the past year, the Future Forum held many lectures and closed doors. I also participated in one or two of them. I think it is very good that people from different fields can get together and open up to communicate and debate. We like being challenged by others very much. Even if we are not very familiar with each other, we can speak frankly about the problems we see and argue more, The more progress you make, the more likely you are to make innovations. So I also hope that today's annual meeting in the future will not only bring together outstanding scientists, entrepreneurs, and talents in different fields, but more importantly, when we gather together, such communication will generate more and more innovation, which will enable China to gradually become a country leading global innovation. Thank you.
