Don't blame Confucius

Last week, Chinese paid homage to two great scholars, Ji Xianlin of Peking University and Ren Jiyu of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences - the first an Indologist, linguist, paleographer, historian, and the second a philosopher, historian and religious scholar.

Their deaths are cause for worry because it's uncertain when the nation's next generation of academic leaders will emerge, says Chan Wan, a Hong Kong-based cultural scholar who earned his PhD from Gottingen University in Germany, where Ji had studied in the 1930s.

Talking to China Daily, Chan says there is ample room for reform in the education system both on the Chinese mainland and in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.