THE recent hammer attack on Dr Fang Zhouzi, a scientist known for exposing academic frauds, was masterminded by noted urologist and professor Xiao Chuanguo, who felt his career threatened by Fang, according to police.

Xiao was detained at Pudong International Airport last week.

Fang was a biologist by training, but in recent years he has been keen on exposing academic frauds. He particularly likes to go after high-profile celebrities, among them Li Yi, a Taoist monk, and Tang Jun, reputedly China's best-paid professional manager.

Xiao's research in urology was said by some to have been worthy of a Nobel Prize in medicine, but for years Fang has been calling it a sham, and probably as a result of Fang's revelations, Xiao failed to be elected to the prestigious China Academy of Sciences.

On August 29, Fang was surprised in a hammer and pepper spray attack near his home and suffered minor injuries.

Subsequent police investigation identified Xiao to be the mastermind, who reportedly spent 100,000 yuan (US$15,000) to "teach Fang a lesson."

Xiao's victims also include an editor from Caijing magazine, who was assaulted in late June, police said. The editor also questioned Xiao's research.

Xiao's fall dramatizes some researchers' obsession with success, at any price.

It is a timely, though depressing, commentary on the narrowly utilitarian nature of today's education.

Recently Yang Yuliang, president of Fudan University, aired his concerns about the lack of moral grounding in our education.

Yang cited an example to illustrate.

After Canadian Governor General Michaelle Jean delivered a lecture at Fudan University this June, she was immediately pressed by several students to explain her recipe for "success" - how she rose from a Haitian refuge to Governor General.

These queries, Yang said, betray the students' obsession with success and short cuts.

The president also observed that when well-known scholars conclude lectures they are often surrounded by students presenting them with letters of recommendation, saying: "Please sign your name here. I want to go to the US."

"A student who is unscrupulously and single-mindedly obsessed with success cannot be trusted, whether he is engaged in research, government or business," Yang said.

Yang believed that the students turned out by universities should first of all have a highly developed sense of responsibility, whether towards individuals, the whole nation, or the whole human race.

"If our schools emphasize passing on knowledge to the neglect of moral cultivation, then the more knowledgeable the students are, the more harmful they might turn out to be to the whole society," Yang said.

Xiao's downfall from a professor and a successful medical expert to a criminal suspect suggests that to some people success justifies all: fraud, plagiarism, or violence.

Fudan President Yang has many reasons to complain.

Ancient wisdom

Yang said that while he was vice president of Fudan, he heard at a forum that a well-known professor could be paid as much as 200,000 yuan for a 40-minute lecture.

A recent article in South Weekend newspaper detailed how PhD candidates' supervisors today are using their students as cheap labor to execute profitable but scientifically valueless projects.

In recent years, Fudan University too has been plagued by scandals involving plagiarism, the latest being an associate professor who was fined and made to apologize in April.

In 2004 one Fudan professor was caught cavorting with a prostitute.

But Yang's assertions about the nature of education are by no means original.

Since ancient times, education has been first and foremost about moral cultivation.

For instance, one of the first things any Confucian student would commit to memory is this: "What great learning teaches is to illustrate illustrious virtue; to renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence."

Ancient Chinese wisdom long ago decided the question of talent vs integrity.

In the opening chapters of "Zizhi Tongjian" ("The Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government"), author Sima Guang (1019-1086) ranked the qualities of official candidates, in order of descending desirability: those with talent and integrity, those with integrity but lacking talent, those lacking both talent and integrity, and those with talent but lacking integrity.

The explanation is that an unscrupulous but talented man is capable of greater sins than, say, someone lacking both talent and integrity.

Unfortunately, during the past three decades the obsession with growth and development has rendered obsolete any virtues not consonant with making money.

The chase for GDP as a national movement gives our society a deceptive facade of vigor and prosperity, and the kudos and applause we hear everyday are so intoxicating that we forget the teachings of our ancestors and the well-being of posterity.

To me, the biggest concern is the state of our elementary education, for that is where our future lies.

If a college student has already received solid moral grounding as a child, he or she probably has the resources and will to deal with an irresponsible professor.

Not a seven-year old pupil.

It is no secret that some elementary school teachers are very perfunctory in their routine instruction, conserving their expertise and energy for highly profitable private tutoring after class.

Recently in Hangzhou two "excellent" (an ironical epithet) teachers were dismissed for running private tutoring businesses, though I think disciplining only two culprits does little to improve the situation.

Future at risk

Elementary school education is said to be "free" in China, until you realize how easy it is for teachers to exact tribute from willing or unwilling parents.

I spent my elementary school years at one of the most remote areas in China, where the whole school was housed in one sepulchral storehouse, where we had a wooden plank for the desk, and mud bricks for stools.

As I recently flipped through a journal I kept 30 years ago as part of a school assignment, I was struck by how the wrong characters had been meticulously marked out and corrected by my teacher, and recalled how I was once inspired by the little words of encouragement the teacher wrote at the end of my entries.

Could my son hope to be similarly privileged in education today?

Ostensibly, my son has every advantage: a large and tall school building and over-qualified faculty - but I heard some of them are very busy after classes.

One of my acquaintance felt obliged to invite every one of his son's teachers to a sumptuous dinner before the school year opened in September.

I am not blaming the teachers - they have got to live too.

We cannot expect teachers to preach and practice socialist ideals while bankers and state-owned enterprise chiefs are feasting on their plunder.

The enshrinement of capitalism and market has a corrosive influence on the very fabric of our society - and our policy makers are still very smug about it.