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Jing Qicheng （Chinese: 荆其诚; March 3, 1926-September 28, 2008, Beijing, China), also translated as Jing, Q.C or Ching,C.C., was a famous Chinese psychologist and a leading pioneer in the opening and reform of Chinese psychology. After the opening and reform of China, Jing became the most distinguished psychologist of contemporary China as well as being the spokesman of Chinese psychology within the international arena. He achieved much as an experimental psychologist and was a theoretical psychologist with great knowledge. He worked to bridge the gap between Chinese and western psychologies with his writings as well as assisted in the organization and practice of international psychology. During his life, he pushed Chinese psychology into the world stage by promoting the exchange of international psychology and focusing on the international aspect of psychology.

Early Life and Career

Jing Qicheng was born on March 3, 1926, in Shenyang, Liaoning Province. Jing moved to Beijing when he was young with his family. Jing graduated from the Department of Psychology at Peiping (former name of Beijing) Fu Jen Catholic University in 1947. After graduating, he continued with graduate work in the Institute of Anthropology. In 1950, Jing started work at the Chinese Academy of Sciences after receiving his Master’s degree and spent his entire further career there. Jing dedicated his life to psychology and achieved prominence in psychological theory, cognition (focusing in color perception), and developmental psychology (focusing Chinese families’ only child).

Honors and Awards

Jing Qicheng worked with various scholarly and professional organizations. He was the Chairman of the Chinese Psychology Society (CPS) and a consulting professor for the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Peking University, and Beijing Normal University. He was also a member of the Academic Degree Committee of the State Council. He received the Honorary Fellowship award by the Hong Kong Psychological society in 1998 followed by the CPS Lifetime Achievement Award CPS in 1999. Jing Qicheng was also a member many other organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, International Fellow of the American Psychological Society, Fellow of the American Psychological Society, Fellow of the International Association of Applied Psychology and Fellow of TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world. In addition, he received international acclaim as a distinguished visit or at La Trobe University in Australia, Henry Luce Fellow at Chicago University in the USA, Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, visiting professor at the University of Michigan, and Fellow of the New York Academy of Science. Jing received further recognition through the numerous of honors that he was presented including the titles Honorary Research Scientist by the University of Michigan, Outstanding Scientific Worker by the China Associations for Science and Technology, the International Honorary Award by the American Psychological Society as well as the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Child Development from the US-based Society for Research in Child Development. Nobel Prize winner Herbert A. Simon said that Jing Qicheng’s contributions to psychology in both China and the world far outweighed his own as an envoy of Chinese academic exchanges.

International exchange
Introducing Chinese Psychology To The Field Of International Psychology

From 1966 to 1976, Chinese psychology suffered greatly because of “Cultural Revolution’’. Jing published 12 articles in international journals such as American Psychologist and the International Journal of Psychology as introductions to Chinese psychology to remedy this situation. He also wrote the entry on Chinese psychology for three different English editions of the Encyclopedia of Psychology.

In 1980, Jing published a article about psychology in the People’s Republic of China in American Psychologist and described the development of psychology in China through five periods: the beginnings of Chinese psychology (1910 - 1948), psychology in the early days of the People’s Republic of China (1949 -1957), the period of growth and development (1958 -1965), the attack on psychology by the ‘gang of four’ (1966 - 1975) and the revival of psychology since 1976.

In April 1981, Jing participated the annual meeting of British Psychological Society and then visited Paris on an invitation. During the visit, his foreign colleagues asked him about Chinese psychology. However, Jing could not provide satisfactory answers during that time. Therefore, this made him want to share present condition of Chinese psychology to his foreign colleagues and strengthened his determination to introduce Chinese psychology to the outside world.

Jing wrote a paper called “Psychology and Four Modernization in China” in 1984 where he discussed the huge setback that Chinese psychology had suffered during the ten years of the “cultural revolution”. He believed that Chinese psychology needs to be linked with the ‘four modernization’ to ardently go abroad. During this time period, he was very aware of the enculturation of Chinese psychology and pushed for the critical borrowing from other foreign psychologies. In 1994, Fu Xiolan and Jing Qicheng cooperated on a study of the relation between psychology and the development of economy, science and technology in 1994. According to their findings within China, psychologists were found to be concentrated in cities and provinces that have high gross output of industry and agriculture, high level of science and technology and higher education and a high living standard. Jing believed that a depressed economy and large population may limit the development of psychology, observing that political and ideological changes have influenced the fate of psychology in China.

Connecting Foreign Psychologies To China

Other than research reports and reviews of cognitive and development psychology, Jing Qicheng authored 21 papers and books in Chinese, connecting domestic scholars with international psychology. Disciplines from Japan, Southeast Asia, the United States, West Germany, Australia, Brittan, and France among others were outlined in Seven of his writings. A majority of these writings were penned after on-site visits within those countries. Jing’s works helped to broadened his colleagues horizons who have never been abroad into new research fields.

Jing was knowledgeable in both experimental psychology and a theoretical psychology. He established the domestic introduction of and comments on Wundt, W.M. and was versed in some theories and schools of international psychology.

Jing was one of the leading figures who commented on Wundt in China. After several years of stagnation, in November 1977, the Chinese Psychology Society (CPS) resumed its normal activities and the academic exchanges were quickly restored. At the beginning of 1978, CPS started a working group studying on Wundt for the preparations to participate in the 22nd International Congress of Psychology (ICP) in 1980, during this congress, there were activities commemorating the 100th anniversary of Wundt’s first psychological laboratory in the world. Many psychologists joined a movement of “commenting on Wundt”. Jing Qicheng, however, had authored a book titled Theoretical Basis of Structuralism Psychology of Wundt, W.M. and Titchener, E.B. where in this book Jing quotes much from Wundt’s work in German and provides objective viewpoints and criticism on Wundt’s and Titchener’s psychological ideas in five aspects: objects of psychological study, methodology, analysis on consciousness factors, psychological processes and parallelism of the mind and body.

Jing also participated in the introductions of some specific theoretical schools of psychology in Soviet Union and western countries. He published Pavlov’s Theory of Analyzer in 1954 and explained Pavlov’s theory in detail. In 1965, Jing became interested in Waston’s behaviorism and began to study sociobiology in 1990. He reflected on those schools about the historical roots, specific views and developmental logic.

Active Participation In The Organization And Practice Of International Psychology

Jing not only created a connection between Chinese and Foreign psychologies, however he also immersed himself in the organizations of international psychology and the practice of international exchanges.

In 1978, Jing with his colleagues attended the 13th annual conference of Australian Psychological Society and this was the first time after the Cultural Revolution for the Chinese to go abroad for academic conference of psychology. After an interval of 30 years, on behalf of the chairman of CPS, Jing was invited to the 78th annual conference of American Psychological Society in New York as the first Chinese psychologist visiting the USA in 1979. In 1980, Jing and ChenLi and so on planned a delegation to attend the 22nd congress of International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS) in Germany and participated in activities that commemorate the memory of the 100th anniversary of Wundt, establishing the first psychological experiment laboratory in the world, when it was the first time that Chinese psychologists attended the ICP after the Cultural Revolution. As the Chinese representative at the symposium of IUPsyS, during the congress, Jing participated in the debate and then the in consensus to admit Chinese CPS into IUPsyS as the 44th member, and it symbolized that Chinese psychology started to join the rest of the world. In 1984, when Jing went to the 23rd ICP and IUPsyS symposium in Mexico, he was voted as a member of the executive committee of IUPsyS, which was the first time a Chinese psychologist joined the leading body of international organizations. Jing later became the vice president of IUPsyS after his second time being a member of the executive committee during the the 25th ICP held in Belgium in 1992 which was the first time for a Chinese psychologist to become a leader of the organization. In the year 1995, when CPS and South China Normal University planned together the IUPsyS Asia-Pacific Regional Conference of Psychology in Guangzhou, China, Jing Qicheng and the IUPsyS president, Kurt Pawlik, performed as co-chairmen. During this conference, both the president and vice president and all members of the executive committee were present, as well as the main leaders of psychological societies from the following countries, China, the USA, Australia, Japan, India, Singapore, Vietnam. Therefore, it was the largest international psychological conference in the history of the discipline. During that same year, Jing was voted as the Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), becoming the first psychologist as an academician there.

Jing’s Psychological View-Point
Jing Qicheng was a knowledgeable psychologist with a broad vision, and he had been to several countries across the world, making international friends without any prejudice or judgment. According to Jing, psychology is more international than cultural specific. Experimental, theoretical and applied psychologies are fundamental members of the family of psychology. Exchanges should be actively performed between psychology and other disciplines, among members within the field of psychology and among psychologies in different countries. The future of psychology is internationalization, which embodied Jing’s psychological ideal and his lifetime pursuit.