James Fallows has a piece in this month’s issue of The Atlantic about two visionary Taiwanese businessmen who have helped advance development in western China:
Several of the trips we took through western villages were in the company of a Taiwanese-born software expert in his early 60s named Kenny Lin, who is now engaged in the most touching and quixotic enterprise I have seen in China—one that my wife and I felt moved to support after seeing its effects in rural schools. During the year I’ve followed Lin, I’ve found his efforts both fascinating and significant, in this sense: They underscore the depth of the economic challenges today’s mighty China still faces. And they suggest the power of a new way of dealing with those challenges. This involves neither the government edicts that have guided the economy for decades nor the me-first capitalist vigor of recent years, but instead a deliberate use of market incentives and technological tools in what Kenny Lin calls an altruistic way.
You can learn more about Lin’s project through his website, YellowSheepRiver.com. One program that Lin has established provides rural students with a sort of work-study grant. Students essentially pay for their tuition by agreeing to blog about their lives in the countryside. You can read their stories here (Chinese only).
