Professor HUANG Yuxiang, who was born in Sichuan, regarded DENG Xiaoping, a Sichuan fellow-townsman, as the person who changed his life.

Because in the late 1970s, when DENG Xiaoping urged the resumption of national college entrance examination, and also required a group of intellectuals to be sent to the Western countries to study advanced management and technology as “visiting scholars”. Its purpose is to reserve talents for the reform and opening-up. HUANG Yuxiang, as a young teacher of Tongji University at that time, was one of the beneficiaries.

The fortune of life happens by chance, but more has its inevitability. When HUANG Yuxiang was studying at Tongji University, he took an English course by chance, which made him become one of the few qualified people to go abroad. From a historical perspective, opening the door to embrace the world is an irreversible necessity of the times. Perhaps the word “openness” was embedded in his life from the moment he boarded a Boeing 707 flying to Canada in 1980.

After returning to China, HUANG Yuxiang was employed as a consulting expert in the World Bank, introducing advanced technologies and ideas such as cost-benefit analysis and feasibility evaluation, etc. into China, and formulating a series of standards to guide local project construction.

Born in the 1940s, HUANG Yuxiang experienced the process from a planned economy to a market economy, which gave him a deep understanding of economic benefits and deep respect for market rules. When he participated in the decision-making consultation of many major projects such as the Nanpu Bridge and the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, etc., these beliefs ran through all aspects of his work.

The reporter met HUANG Yuxiang in an ordinary flat building. Although there are many students all over the world and even many of his students are in high positions, Professor HUANG still leads a very simple life. The scenes of the past are vivid in his mind. Those glorious years of participating in China’s construction and embracing the world became the treasure he cherished all his life.

Working as a carpenter at a construction site after graduation

Reporter: I have heard that you worked at a construction site after graduation, so how did it happen?

 HUANG Yuxiang: I stayed as a teacher in our university after graduation in 1963. From 1964 to 1965, I went to work at a construction site, because it was stipulated by the Ministry of Education that: new teachers or teaching assistants must participate in professional internships, the batch of our young teachers who stayed as the teachers in the university went to the construction site, and I was assigned to do carpentry work at Wujing construction site.

Reporter: What did you do specifically at the construction site?

 HUANG Yuxiang: At that time, we had to do physical work such as sawing saws, hammering nails and even carrying wood, etc. to build Wujing Chemical Plant. But I was in my 20s at that time, so I could do all this physical work.

Our later work was combined with our major, before we went to work at the construction site, the ordinary carpenters couldn’t understand the drawings from the Design Institute, and only retired senior carpenters can understand them. But as we had taken an architectural drawing course, our ability to read the drawings became our advantage. The carpenters made me do this work exclusively. I was responsible for assigning tasks, and later, I became the head of this woodworking team. I worked at the construction site for one year, which helped me a lot. It was a real job at the frontline.

Researching cost-benefit analysis in Canada

Reporter: What was your major while studying in Canada?

 HUANG Yuxiang: I was the only teacher at Tongji University who went on further study at the University of Toronto. At that time, it was a little embarrassing that I taught Structural Mechanics at Tongji University before going abroad, not Economic Management. Therefore, it was a question of whether I should continue to study Civil Engineering or Economic Management in Canada. I was 40 years old at that time, and if I studied Economic Management again, the starting point was zero.

In the beginning, I went to the School of Engineering from the University of Toronto, and found that their professional equipment was not as good as Tongji’s, so I chose the direction of Engineering Economy, mainly cost-benefit analysis. Regarding the benefit brought by Engineering Economics, it includes both engineering content and economic content. This major was called Technical Economics in China at that time, and in fact, the object of study was similar, namely the economic aspect of engineering technology. Engineering technology serves the social economy. Now, 5G, artificial intelligence and missiles and the like in China belong to the category of technology. Whether the technology serves the society or national defense, economic accounts must be calculated.

Reporter: Did it have anything to do with your teacher when you chose this major?

 HUANG Yuxiang: Yes, it did. The old-timer of our School of Economics and Management is ZHAI Lilin, who has studied engineering economics and is also the founder of the management engineering discipline of Tongji University. Before I went abroad, he advised me to return to the field of economic management, because our country needs talents in this field. Although this major has no deep academic connotation, it is more practical. I also think that: Engineering Economics will be immediately available to a country with the task of rebuilding.

Reporter: What impressed you most about your study at that time?

 HUANG Yuxiang: I’m impressed by the cost-benefit analysis, which is about the economic analysis of public projects or infrastructure projects. Unlike normal investment returns, the public project investment should consider its social and economic benefits. For example, we can’t build high-speed rail, water infrastructure, museums, hospitals, schools and so on according to the commercial models, because some projects can’t be quantified into money, and the private employers are reluctant to invest in them, we have to use another model of public spending to make an analysis, and this is what we have called the cost-benefit analysis.

Reporter: Can you give me some examples?

 HUANG Yuxiang: At that time, the University of Toronto was working on the reuse of paper. In fact, there was a lot of wood in Canada and paper was not a problem, but they said they couldn’t waste paper, they wanted to save the wood, and the professor took the lead in taking the waste paper out of the trash can for further use, which touched me a lot.

Going to Zhongnanhai(the residential compound in Beijing housing top party leaders) to draft important documents

Reporter: When did you return to China?

 HUANG Yuxiang: In 1982, I returned to China according to the regulations of the State. At that time, I was married, and my wife and children were in Shanghai. I thought, our country spent so much money for me to go out to study for two years, I should come back to work as soon as possible, and contribute to the development of our country, so I came back without a day’s delay. When we got back, we were treated like the treasures of our university as well as the whole country.

Reporter: What did you do at that time?

HUANG Yuxiang: From 1982 to 1986, the situation of the whole country was open to the outside world. A large number of loan projects from the World Bank, the United Nations, Japan, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom at that time were coming in. According to the regulations, these projects were required to undergo an economic evaluation (that is, to do a feasibility study). As a matter of fact, the investment in a project or even the formulation of a policy requires a pre-decision study, generally speaking, whether the project is technically feasible and economically reasonable. At that time, I was mainly responsible for this kind of work.

Reporter: Was our country short of this kind of talent at that time?

 HUANG Yuxiang: At that time, the government staff from the state down to the grassroots level were not very familiar with this kind of work, because in the planned economy period, the projects were often constructed after the completion of the project design, and even some decisions were made by “patting them on their heads”. At that time, the western developed countries including the United States, welcomed and supported the policy of China’s reform and opening-up, because they had a lot of capital but little labor force, while China had a lot of labor force but little capital. Investors were very willing to come to China, so they needed someone in China to help them communicate about the investment matters.

Reporter: What are the requirements for these jobs?

 HUANG Yuxiang: First of all, you must have necessary English language skills. At that time, when many experts and professors from the World Bank came to our university, the teachers from the School of Foreign Languages failed to translate the industry terms included in the project, so I was assigned to receive experts and did a lot of translation work after returning to China.

Around 1985, while doing translation and feasibility studies, I was invited by the Development Research Center of the State Council located in Zhongnanhai, to draft the first edition of the Methodology and Parameters of Economic Evaluation on Construction Projects, which was published as a document of the State Development Planning Commission. This is a guidance document, and the construction project from the top to the bottom must refer to this document.

Participating in international exchanges and cooperation in running schools

Reporter: You have participated in the work of international exchange and cooperation in running school from Tongji University. When did it first start?

 HUANG Yuxiang: As early as 1987, we started to exchange students with the universities in Europe. The first exchange students were from a business school in Germany, a small private university, right on the Rhine River. When the Dean of that private university came to China for a visit, he agreed with us that we could consider student exchanges and mutual tuition waiver, and their university could also consider offering accommodation to Chinese students.

Our School of Economics and Management put me in charge of this matter, so I went to visit that university in Germany alone. It was a holiday, and one of the students gave me the key to the gate of their university and left, leaving me alone that night. The next day, I discussed the student exchange quota and other matters with the responsible person(s) in that university, and the matter of international exchange and cooperation in running a school was settled.

Reporter: Did the communication go well?

 HUANG Yuxiang: The private university was relatively quick to handle affairs. There were two groups of exchanges between 1987 and 1988, with 7 to 8 people in each group. The private university sent students for exchanges while we sent young teachers for exchanges. Their students were proficient in English, their knowledge of business administration had reached a considerable level, but we were relatively weak in this field, so it was hard to arrange their learning.

I told them about China’s project economic evaluation and shadow prices, and Mr. ZHAI Lilin taught them about Chinese culture in German, such as “Before my bed a pool of night” and so on. I also invited some officials to introduce China’s national conditions and China’s economic policies to them, and I acted as an interpreter. The German students were hungry for knowledge and asked a lot of questions, which also benefited me a lot.

Reporter: What do you think international exchanges can bring to students?

 HUANG Yuxiang: It certainly has a lot of benefits for students, and I think: understanding how other countries do it and how we do it by ourselves, can promote cultural exchange, at least it can broaden our horizons, and it does no harm. I have always advocated going to the world, opening up and contacting more, which can enrich your knowledge, but help you learn from the strengths of many foreign countries.