Professor Yang Canming “learn to be an excellent teacher, act as an exemplary person”

Good news come one after another, after getting the honor title of “Famous Cultural Figure of Central Propaganda Department”, president and tutor of doctors, professor Yang Canming was elected as a leading talent in “Ten Thousand Project”. During his 30 years of teaching, he still held the rigorous attitude of “One should sit to study for ten years, and never writes down anything irrelevant.” He cared about the development of economic society and people’s livelihood, deeply devoted to doing research and writing papers. He also obtained outstanding scientific research achievements, and got a high reputation in academic circle. In the early 1990s, professor Yang, Professor Wu Junpei and Professor Xu Jianguo were called the “three carriages” in domestic fiscal circle, he made great contributions to the construction and development of fiscal discipline in ZUEL.

 “Have a wrong start but a good result”, rigorous in study, finally become a financial and tax expert.

When he was young, yang used to be a literature youth. But half year before the college entrance exam, he transferred from science and math to literature and art. He was interested in reading literary classics and magazines in his childhood. Spending less than one month, he remembered the knowledge in history and geography textbook. In 1979, he filled his first and second university entrance exam volunteer in Chinese department at famous schools, but accidentally elected by his third volunteer major----fiscal major in Hubei Institute of Finance and Economics (what we call Zhongnan University of Economics and Law now). Therefore he lost the chance to learn Chinese which he was interested in. From freshman to junior last semester, he read and written novels, read poems and wrote poems in his spare time, but all his literary contributions were refused. One day, he burned all of them and returned to his major. Day after day, he read the Das Kapital and decided to apply for post graduate in fiscal major.

When he was a post graduate, Yang studied under Liang Shangmin who is a famous fiscal expert and makes important influence on the future academic research of Yang with word and deed. Professor Liang has his own characteristic in cultivating talents. He skillfully combines reading and thinking with research and practice, and attaches much importance to both solid foundation and actual use. Yang’s first research achievement was his report written after his practice in XiangFan in 1984. After that, he published the investigation report on Guangxi Finance about the construction of Nanning city’s fiscal resource in 1985, academic paper “A preliminary study on the system control theory of financial distribution” on Journal of Hubei College of Finance and Economics. Since then, he had a great interest in academic study, and devoted all his time to academic research. He read many books and classics, learned the knowledge of former scholars. He investigated in actual condition to get the live data for scientific research, considered and thought them over and over again, so that he made a large amount of academic achievements with high-quality and deep influence.

When he was a doctor, Yang studied under a famous scholar professor Peng Xinglv who is considered as the “founder in Chinese marketing”. Peng’s idea “to be a decent people, broad innovative study” leads him to study further. Peng emphasizes that “being a man right after setting up his moral, becoming a high-quality man before being a successful people”. He points out that teachers and students should be “clear, quiet and progressive” which means they should combine innovation power with control force. He especially states the social responsibility of high-level intellectuals, and requires them to strive for the “four deeds” raised by scholar Zhang Ru in song dynasty, which include “set the mind for heaven and earth, set the destiny for ordinary people, set the principal for former intellectuals, set the peace for the whole world”. He encourages students to become high-level talents with grateful hearts and social responsibility. Under the guidance of Peng, Yang combines government with market, writes the high quality doctoral paper Market Structure and Government Economics which is considered as an excellent doctoral dissertation in Hubei Province. Under this basis, his book Market Structure and Government Economies won the third award of Outstanding Achievements of Social Science in Hubei(1994-1998). After that, Yang becomes a top-notch player in academic research. He enjoys the happiness brought by his research, achieves the qualitative leap of his research results, produces many high-level scientific outputs, and establishes his lofty position in the financial circle. Since 1997, Yang holds three National Social Science Foundation projects, one key research project of philosophy and social science in Ministry of Education, one Fok Ying Tung Education Foundation project, over 20 provincial research projects of education department, fiscal department,scientificdepartment, Science and Technology Department of Hubei Province and Office of Finance. He publishes nearly 20 books and teaching materials, 140 academic papers in Chinese Social Sciences, Economic Research and Management World. 20 researches of him win the rewards at provincial of national level. He wins one first and one third award at provincial level. He wins five first awards, seven second awards, nearly ten third awards at provincial level. Fiscal department and Provincial Government of Hubei provincial Party Committee attach great importance to Yang’s investigation reports, former secretary of the Party Committee of Hubei Province Li Hongzhong writes comments on his reports for many times. His reports provide intellectual support to serve social economic development, and make active contributions to the practice of national fiscal reform.

As for how to study, Yang has his unique view. He suggests that scholarship is the grasp of time, space and thought. As for the length of time, since the evolution of thousands of years, we have abundant data to research and as reference. Through the research of human history and the exploration of social development trace, we will think regular problems, gain knowledge and obtain inspiration. As for the extent of space, there are about two hundred countries and ethics. In different ethics, they have their own language and civilization which provide abundant data and broad space for us to explore. While in all the three, human thinking is critical to academic research. It’s because that time presents history, as for now, we can’t experience what happened in the past. The information we use is from indirect historical records and research of historical objects, so we can doubt the reliability of them. In the same manner, space represents the whole world. Because of our limited experience, we can also doubt the reliability of it. Therefore, on the one hand, it requires us to read as many books as we can and try our best to obtain indirect information, on the other hand, we should do as many practice as we can and try our best to experience the actual world. But we should transcend existed theory and practice through distinguish, judge and think of the “time information” and “space information” ,then process and arrange them to make our own thinking results, as so-called “Xuewen”.

Professor Yang makes great contributions to fiscal discipline and academic research, which makes him gain a great fame in fiscal circle and government departments. He enjoys Special Government Allowances of the State Council; he is a candidate in the first batch of “The NationalTalents Project in New Century”, a famous cultural figure and “Four First Batch” of the central  Propaganda Department, a leading talent of philosophy social science in “Ten Thousand Project”, a candidate  of New Century Excellent Talents in University, a candidate in the project of Young Experts Who Make An Outstanding Contribution to Hubei Province, a candidate in The Project of High-level Talents in New Century of Hubei Province, a candidate of the ”First-Five-Batch” project of Cultural Department. Now he has many academic and social positions such as vice-chair of Teaching Steering Committee of Ministry of Finance, Executive Director of Chinese Finance Society, Executive Director of Chinese Taxation Society, Consultant of the Government of Hubei, Wuhan, Huangshi, and Huanggang. Expert of National Social Science Fund Assessment, Editor of Finance and Trade Economics, chief Editor of  Journal of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law

“All flowers bloom together will decorate the garden”.  What he does influence others, and he creates a brilliant discipline.

“Only when all flowers bloom, then spring has really come”. While he does a good job in learning, he puts more efforts on construction of academic team and discipline platform. Since he was responsible for the fiscal major in 2000, professor Yang took various measures, used many kinds of methods, and leaded the discipline faculties to constantly pave new ways for discipline construction. In order to establish a teacher team of high starting point, young faculties and internalization, and improve their strength by combining “leading” with “cultivating”. He brings in excellent doctors form foreign countries and universities sponsored by 985 project to fulfill teachers group and improve their structure. He adopts the cultivation plan of “practice-oriented and international-oriented” for teachers group. He appoints young teachers to practice in fiscal departments through which can they improve their fiscal ability, deepen their learning of fiscal reform, carry out academic research on highlights and problems in local fiscal reform and broaden international communication channel. He encourages young teachers to study, visit and train in foreign countries so as to improve the international level of teachers group. After several years’ efforts, we have formed a teacher group of high education background and teaching post, rational age structure.  A large amount of young teachers have showed their talents in academic circle. To strengthen the discipline scientific research through constant academic lessons and seminars to create a great academic atmosphere, playing the leading roles of discipline leaders and academic backbones, accumulating young academic talents in declaring high-level research topics and carry out academic research to form advantages of a group, constantly improving the system of scientific research reward to stimulate them to produce excellent research results, encouraging them to come out with their research achievements to participate in high-level seminars both inside and outside our country, he attaches great importance to the construction of discipline platform, successfully declares the Hubei Provincial College Humanities and Social Sciences Key Research Base-- Hubei Center for finance and development. He sets up academic platforms such as China Government Procurement Research Institute and China Income Distribution Research Center to actively organize relevant academic activities. Under Yang’s leadership and his unremitting efforts, the construction of discipline has made abundant achievements. The fiscal major in our school has been approved by the Finance Ministry as the first batch of key disciplines in finance, and as national class key discipline in 2002. Fiscal Study was elected as national excellent course in 2004, as class A two plus major in economics in 2006, as specialty construction points of colleges and universities by Ministry of Education in 2007, the fiscal team as national excellent teaching team in 2008, as national quality resources sharing course in 2013, Fiscal in Life was elected as national quality video open class in 2014, by the same year, fiscal major set the project of professional comprehensive reform in national undergraduate teaching.

“Teaches students knowledge, tells students the way to live and answers students' questions”, go through struggles in academic research, and cultivate students who contribute to the whole society.

As for talent cultivation, Yang thinks the primary task is to teach students how to be a true person then how to study knowledge. He says that we should give priority to cultivating a perfect personality, forming professional foundation and developing decent research methods. We should cultivate students to be patriotic, require them to “study in ZUEL, care for the whole country”. We should strengthen their sense of social responsibility and historical mission, develop school spirit and practice the school motto, cultivate students’ comprehensive quality. We should ask them to read more and good books, concentrate on studying and enriching themselves. We cultivate a batch of talents with high quality, many of them have become cadres at the provincial or ministerial level and leading roles of departments, many of them have become famous experts and scholars, many of then have become successful businessman, while the majority of them have become backbones in government offices, enterprises, public institutions, and high schools. The doctorate paper Research on Efficiency of Government Budget Behavior by his student  Huangming  in the class of 2002 won Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Award in Hubei, the paper Economic Analysis of Government Education Expenditure by his student Liao Chuhui in the class of 2004 won the second Huang Da - Mundell prize in Economics, the paper Institutional Analysis and Reform Path of Rural Public Goods Supply in China by his student Hu Hongshu in the class of 2005 won Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Award in Hubei, the paper Research on the Scale and Convergence of Local Government by his student Sun Qunli in the class of 2006 won the third Award for outstanding achievement in scientific research of Ministry of Education(Humanities and Social Sciences,2009),the paper Research on Government Budget Constraint by his student Song Youchun in the class of 2006 won the Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Award in Hubei, the paper Research on Optimal Fiscal Expenditure Structure in Economic Growth by his student Zhao Fujun in the class of 2004 won the Outstanding Master Thesis Award in Hubei, the paper Comparative Analysis of Income Mobility between Urban and Rural Residents in China by his student Zhaoying in the class of 2012 won the Outstanding Master Thesis Award in Hubei, the paper From Positive to Steady -- Retrospect and Prospect of Fiscal Policy in China by his student Wangyu in the class of 2014 won the first Excellent Bachelor Thesis Award in Hubei.

“While picking asters “neath the Eastern fence” with elegant interest, leave fresh air to fulfill earth and heaven”

In his spare time, professor Yang is interested in handwriting, painting and photography. He is good at running script, cursive script and regular script, especially the latter two. We established “overseas students’ calligraphy studio” to teach foreign students to learn how to write calligraphy. Professor Yang teaches the course himself from the basic strokes. The class attracts a batch of foreign students to stick to handwriting practice and creation, and then becomes a special character for foreign students. Yang takes these hobbies as a relief of life. He thinks these hobbies can improve temperature, develop healthy interests in life as well as strengthen spirit and release job pressure.