Who has the talent? The game between China and the United States in the global competition for scientific and technological talents

Who has the talent?

In the race for technological supremacy, this question trumps all else. Not so long ago, the answer was unquestionable: America.

But today, although the United States is still the first choice for the world's most ambitious scientific talents, scientific research funding cuts, restrictive immigration policies, and suspicion of Chinese scientists are gradually eroding its advantages; at the same time, China, although it still has many serious shortcomings, is becoming an increasingly competitive alternative.

Two events in the past few months illustrate the appeal of both countries. The Fields Medal is one of the highest honors in the field of mathematics. Among the four winners of this year's award, two are scholars who were born in China and later went to the United States for further study. They have made great achievements in the Western academic system and are still in the West.

Then there is Yang Zhilin. Like many Chinese, he went to the United States to pursue a graduate degree. But unlike those who chose to stay, he later returned to China and founded Dark Side of the Moon. In July this year, his company released a very good open source artificial intelligence model, Kimi K3. Its performance is close to the top models in the United States, but its cost is lower.

When Yang Zhilin received his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 2019, there was no shortage of opportunities in the United States. But he told his doctoral advisor, computer science professor Ruslan Salakhtinov, that he was determined to start a business in China.

"The United States still has a very big advantage. We can attract the best talent," Salakhtinov said. "But China will become more and more attractive. In the field of artificial intelligence, this has become very obvious."

China has also become more successful in recruiting academic scientists from abroad. Omar Yaghi, who co-won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year, is leaving the University of California, Berkeley, to join Tsinghua University, where he will lead an institute that uses artificial intelligence to accelerate the discovery of new materials. Since last year, universities in mainland China and Hong Kong have recruited at least eight prominent mathematicians from Western academic institutions. Joshua Zar, who has collaborated with Wang Hong, one of this year’s Fields Medal winners, has been hired full-time at Nankai University. He declined to comment on the job change.

These are significant achievements for a country where only one scientist working in mainland China, Tu Youyou, has won a Nobel Prize in science.

Dong Jielin, who studies China's science and technology policy, said the biggest change in China's ability to attract talent is funding. She said that 20 years ago, scientists returning from overseas were usually expected to make financial sacrifices in the name of serving the country. Nowadays, Chinese universities offer salaries that are competitive with those in Europe and provide generous settling-in subsidies.

However, after the announcement of this year's Fields Medal winner, a question emerged amid widespread coverage in the Chinese media and heated discussions on the Internet: Can China's academic system give young researchers who have yet to prove themselves enough freedom, patience, and room to tolerate failure, so that they can eventually grow into outstanding talents?

Two Chinese winners, Wang Hong and Deng Yu, entered Peking University in 2007. Deng Yu was a gold medal winner in the International Mathematical Olympiad and was directly recommended to Peking University School of Mathematics. After his sophomore year, he transferred to MIT, earned his PhD at Princeton, and became a professor at the University of Chicago.

He said that at that time, in the field of basic sciences, it was very common among Chinese students to study overseas for Ph.D. He said that China's mathematics level has made great progress since then, and the number of papers published by local Chinese researchers in top mathematics journals has also increased significantly.

Wang Hong, 35 years old, entered Peking University when she was 16. She initially studied earth and space science and transferred to the mathematics department after a year.

She went to Ecole Polytechnique near Paris and then continued graduate studies at MIT. In a video, she recounted how her doctoral advisor would patiently listen to her explanations when others at MIT disagreed. "This helped me build up my confidence," Wang Hong said. She currently holds professorships at New York University and the Institut Supérieure des Sciences. She declined to be interviewed.

After the Fields Medal was announced, the Simons Foundation released a video. Wang Hong said in the video that she once felt "a little discouraged", but later met professors in France and the United States who helped her build confidence. Wang Hong was not criticizing Peking University, but the word “discouraged” she mentioned resonated widely in China. Many people use the term as a simplistic summary of their own similar experiences in a highly competitive education system shaped by punishment and humiliation. On social media platform Weibo, the hashtag "discouraged" remains censored.

"If they had not left China when they were 20 years old, would they still be standing on that podium today?" asked a YouTube commentator named "Old Zhou Hengmei". He believes that China's scientific research achievements still do not match its economic size and huge talent reserve.

China is getting closer to having the funding and infrastructure to attract top scientists. But even harder to replicate is the freedom, trust and institutional stability that young talent needs to thrive. And these remain America's greatest strengths, and the very ones its current policies are jeopardizing.

“In the past, America was kind of the default option, the no-brainer,” Terence Tao, an Australian-born Fields Medalist and UCLA professor, said in a video.

Last year, the Trump administration suspended federal funding for UCLA, a move that affected his own research funding as well as an institute he co-directs. Those funds were later restored after a successful lawsuit. But he warned that a sudden interruption in research funding could disrupt years of research projects and undermine researchers' trust in the entire scientific research system.

“The best and the brightest may no longer come to the United States as naturally as they did in past decades,” he said.

In 2023, foreign students will account for nearly 44% of STEM doctorates awarded by American universities. A 2023 study found that Chinese students earned 17% of all science and engineering doctorates in the United States in 2020; about 87% of Chinese students who earned doctorates between 2005 and 2015 originally intended to stay in the United States.