Gates a new type of hero for youth

Source: Xinhua  |   2008-6-28  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

FOR some Chinese, Bill Gates, who retired yesterday, is more than a billionaire and president of the computer software giant Microsoft. In a way, he has changed the perception of many people.

Chinese got to know his name about 15 years ago when computers became a necessity in ordinary homes.

According to an online survey at QQ.com, 48 percent of the 218,550 votes listed Gates' most impressive achievement as being "one of the world's richest" people.

In another study by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Education last year, the Seattle native ranked third among heroes for students from 19 colleges in the capital, following late Premier Zhou Enlai and Chairman Mao Zedong.

In the past, the idols for young people were Lei Feng, a soldier characterized as a selfless and modest person who was indoctrinated to follow Mao in 1963, and the determined Paul Kocakin, hero of the former Soviet Union novel "How the Steel was Tempered."

"College students nowadays tend to be more realistic," said Shen Jie, a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences research fellow. In fact, Gates did more than tell the conservative Chinese after the country adopted its reform and opening-up policy that "greed is good."

"The billionaire who topped the Forbes fortune list for 13 years mapped out another way to succeed," said Zhao Lulu, a 25-year-old student, pursuing a Masters' degree in information and communication engineering at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Learning from Gates who dropped out of Harvard University to start his career, Li Wancheng, a Chongqing Technology and Business University student, quit to opened a shop near his school in 2005. Later he worked as contractor for building automation systems.

"I want to become the Chinese Bill Gates," he said. "Each success could bring me a step nearer to my idol."

Shortly before his retirement, the philanthropist further impressed the world with a huge donation to the quake-ravaged region in southwest China and the announcement that his fortune - US$58 billion - would go to charity rather than be left to his children.

This is very much in tune with traditional Chinese values.