Mar 30 2024
Four things you need to know about China’s AI talent pool 

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

In 2019, MIT Technology Review covered a report that shined a light on how fast China’s AI talent pool was growing. Its main finding was pretty interesting: the number of elite AI scholars with Chinese origins had multiplied by 10 in the previous decade, but relatively few of them stayed in China for their work. The majority moved to the US. 

Now the think tank behind the report has published an updated analysis, showing how the makeup of global AI talent has changed since—during a critical period when the industry has shifted significantly and become the hottest technology sector. 

The team at MacroPolo, the think tank of the Paulson Institute, an organization that focuses on US-China relations, studied the national origin, educational background, and current work affiliation of top researchers who gave presentations and had papers accepted at NeurIPS, a top academic conference on AI. Their analysis of the 2019 conference resulted in the first iteration of the Global AI Talent Tracker. They’ve analyzed the December 2022 NeurIPS conference for an update three years later.

I recommend you read the original report, which has a very well-designed infographic that shows the talent flow across countries. But to save you some time, I also talked to the authors and highlighted what I think are the most surprising or important takeaways from the new report. Here are the four main things you need to know about the global AI talent landscape today. 

1.  China has become an even more important country for training AI talent.

Even in 2019, Chinese researchers were already a significant part of the global AI community, making up one-tenth of the most elite AI researchers. In 2022, they accounted for 26%, almost dethroning the US (American researchers accounted for 28%). 

Two pie charts showing the countries of origin of AI researchers in 2019 and 2022.

“Timing matters,” says Ruihan Huang, senior research associate at MacroPolo and one of the lead authors. “The last three years have seen China dramatically expand AI programs across its university system—now there are some 2,000 AI majors—because it was also building an AI industry to absorb that talent.” 

As a result of these university and industry efforts, many more students in computer science or other STEM majors have joined the AI industry, making Chinese researchers the backbone of cutting-edge AI research.

2. AI researchers now tend to stay in the country where they receive their graduate degree. 

This is perhaps intuitive, but the numbers are still surprisingly high: 80% of AI researchers who went to a graduate school in the US stayed to work in the US, while 90% of their peers who went to a graduate school in China stayed in China.

In a world where major countries are competing with each other to take the lead in AI development, this finding suggests a trick they could use to expand their research capacity: invest in graduate-level institutions and attract overseas students to come. 

This is particularly important in the US-China context, where the souring of the relationship between the two countries has affected the academic field. According to news reports, quite a few Chinese graduate students have been interrogated at the US border or even denied entry in recent years, as a Trump-era policy persisted. Along with the border restrictions imposed during the pandemic years, this hostility could have prevented more Chinese AI experts from coming to the US to learn and work. 

3. The US still overwhelmingly attracts the most AI talent, but China is catching up.

In both 2019 and 2022, the United States topped the rankings in terms of where elite AI researchers work. But it’s also clear that the distance between the US and other countries, particularly China, has shortened. In 2019, almost three-fifths of top AI researchers worked in the US; only two-fifths worked here in 2022. 

“The thing about elite talent is that they generally want to work at the most cutting-edge and dynamic places. They want to do incredible work and be rewarded for it,” says AJ Cortese, a senior research associate at MacroPolo and another of the main authors. “So far, the United States still leads the way in having that AI ecosystem—from leading institutions to companies—that appeals to top talent.”

Two pie charts showing the leading countries where AI researchers work in 2019 and 2022.

In 2022, 28% of the top AI researchers were working in China. This significant portion speaks to the growth of the domestic AI sector in China and the job opportunities it has created. Compared with 2019, three more Chinese universities and one company (Huawei) made it into the top tier of institutions that produce AI research. 

It’s true that most Chinese AI companies are still considered to lag behind their US peers—for example, China usually trails the US by a few months in releasing comparable generative AI models. However, it seems like they have started catching up.

4. Top-tier AI researchers now are more willing to work in their home countries.

This is perhaps the biggest and also most surprising change in the data, in my opinion. Like their Chinese peers, more Indian AI researchers ended up staying in their home country for work.

In fact, this seems to be a broader pattern across the board: it used to be that more than half of AI researchers worked in a country different from their home. Now, the balance has tipped in favor of working in their own countries. 

Two pie charts showing the portion of AI researchers choosing to work abroad vs. at home in 2019 and 2022.

This is good news for countries trying to catch up with the US research lead in AI. “It goes without saying most countries would prefer ‘brain gain’ over ‘brain drain’—especially when it comes to a highly complex and technical discipline like AI,” Cortese says. 

It’s not easy to create an environment and culture that not only retains its own talents but manages to pull scholars from other countries, but lots of countries are now working on it. I can only begin to imagine what the report might look like in a few years.  

Did anything else stand out to you in the report? Let me know your thoughts by writing to zeyi@technologyreview.com.

Now read the rest of China Report

Catch up with China

1. The Dutch prime minister will visit China this week to discuss with Chinese president Xi Jinping whether the Dutch chipmaking equipment company ASML can keep servicing Chinese clients. (Reuters $)

  • Here’s an inside look into ASML’s factory and how it managed to dominate advanced chipmaking. (MIT Technology Review)

2. Hong Kong passed a tough national security law that makes it more dangerous to protest Beijing’s rule. (BBC)

3. A new bill in France suggests imposing hefty fines on Shein and similar ultrafast-fashion companies for their negative environmental impact—as much as $11 per item that they sell in France. (Nikkei Asia)

4. Huawei filed a patent to make more advanced chips with a low-tech workaround. (Bloomberg $)

  • Meanwhile, a US official accused the Chinese chip foundry SMIC of breaking US law by making a chip for Huawei. (South China Morning Post $)

5. Instead of the usual six and a half days a week, Tesla has instructed its Shanghai factory to reduce production to five days a week. The slowdown of EV sales in China could be the reason. (Bloomberg $)

6. TikTok is still having plenty of troubles. A new political TV ad (paid for by a mysterious new nonprofit), playing in three US swing states, attacks Zhang Fuping, a ByteDance vice president that very few people have heard of. (Punchbowl News)

  • As TikTok still hasn’t reached a licensing deal with Universal Music Group, users have had to get creative to find alternative soundtracks for their videos. (Billboard)

7. China launched a communications satellite that will help relay signals for missions to explore the dark side of the moon. (Reuters $)

Lost in translation

The most-hyped generative AI app in China these days is Kimi, according to the Chinese publication Sina Tech. Released by Moonshot AI, a Chinese “unicorn” startup, Kimi made headlines last week when it announced it had started supporting inputting text using over 2 million Chinese characters. (For comparison, OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo currently supports inputting 100,000 Chinese characters, while Claude3-200K supports about 160,000 characters.)

While some of the app’s virality can be credited to a marketing push that intensified recently. Chinese users are now busy feeding popular and classic books to the model and testing how well it can understand the context. Feeling threatened, other Chinese AI apps owned by tech giants like Baidu and Alibaba have followed suit, announcing that they will soon support 5 million or even 10 million Chinese characters. But processing large amounts of text, while impressive, is very costly in the generative AI age—and some observers worry this isn’t the commercial direction that companies ought to head in.

One more thing

Fluffy pajamas, sweatpants, outdated attire: young Chinese people are dressing themselves in “gross outfits” to work—an intentional provocation to their bosses and an expression of silent resistance to the trend that glorifies career hustle. “I just don’t think it’s worth spending money to dress up for work, since I’m just sitting there,” one of them told the New York Times.

Update: The story has been updated to clarify the affiliation of the report authors.

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Mar 10 2024
Chinese EVs have entered center stage in US-China tensions

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

So far, electric vehicles have mostly been discussed in the US through a scientific, economic, or environmental lens. But all of a sudden, they have become highly political. 

Last Thursday, the Biden administration announced it would investigate the security risks posed by Chinese-made smart cars, which could “collect sensitive data about our citizens and our infrastructure and send this data back to the People’s Republic of China,” the statement from White House claims.

While many other technologies from China have been scrutinized because of security concerns, EVs have largely avoided that sort of attention until now. After all, they represent a technology that will greatly help the world transition to clean and renewable energy, and people have greeted its rapid growth in China with praise.

But US-China relations have been at a low point since the Trump years and the pandemic, and it seems like only a matter of time before any trade or interaction between the two countries falls under security scrutiny. Now it’s EVs’ turn.

The White House has made clear that there are two motivations behind the investigation: the economy and security.

Even though the statement didn’t explicitly mention EVs, it’s undeniable that they are the only reason Chinese automakers have now become serious challengers to their American peers. Chinese companies like BYD make quality EVs at affordable prices, making them increasingly competitive in international markets. A recent report by the Alliance for American Manufacturing, an industry group, even describes EV competition as “China’s existential threat to America’s auto industry.”

“The issue of Chinese EV imports really hits on so many major political factors all at the same time,” says Kyle Chan, a sociology researcher at Princeton University who studies industrial policies and China. “Not just the auto plants in swing states like Michigan and Ohio, but the broader auto manufacturing sector spread over many important states.”

If the US auto industry fails to remain competitive, it will threaten the job security of millions of Americans, and countless other parts of the US economy will be affected. So it’s no surprise Chinese EVs are seen as a major economic threat that needs to be addressed. 

In fact, it’s one of the few issues everyone seems to agree on in this election cycle. Before the Biden investigation, Trump drew people’s attention to Chinese EVs during campaign speeches, vowing to slap a 60% tariff on Chinese imported goods. Josh Hawley, a Republican senator and a longtime China hawk, proposed a bill last Tuesday for a whopping 125% tariff on Chinese cars, including Chinese-branded cars made in other countries like Mexico.

But the new action taken by the Biden administration introduces another factor to the discussion: security threats.

Basically, the argument here is that Chinese cars—especially the newer ones with smart features that collect information from the environment or connect to the telecom and satellite network—could be used to steal information and harm US national interests. 

To many experts, this argument is a lot less supported by reality. When TikTok and Huawei were subject to similar concerns, it was because their products were widely used in the US. But the majority of Chinese-made cars are running inside China. There are barely any Chinese cars being sold in the US today, let alone the latest models. That makes the White House’s position look slightly bizarre. 

Lei Xing, an auto analyst and observer of the EV industry, has very strong opinions about the security accusations in the Biden administration’s announcement. “It is full of subjective and inaccurate statements trying to paint a picture of threat and security risk that is much greater than it actually is, and is obviously aimed at gaining voter favor as the presidential election race heats up,” Xing tells me.

Nonetheless, fears over data security are shared across the political spectrum in the US. “There has been almost an emerging consensus in Washington, across party lines, that is much more concerned about Chinese data collection through potential technology channels,” Chan says. 

This lens has now been used to question almost any technology product with Chinese connections: whether it’s Chinese cars, Chinese e-commerce apps like Shein and Temu, social media platforms like TikTok and WeChat, or smart home gadgets, the sentiment about data security remains the same.

Having watched these other technologies come into the geopolitical crossfire from afar, Chinese EV companies were mostly prepared for what was announced last week. 

“I think the Chinese EV firms have already baked this into their calculations,” Chan says. “As they’ve been ramping up more joint ventures and partnerships and entering other markets of the world, I’ve noticed a very clear reluctance to put that much investment into the US market.”

Recently, BYD Americas’ CEO said in an interview that its new planned factory in Mexico will serve the domestic market rather than exporting to the US; Xing learned recently that NIO, another Chinese car company, removed the US from its initial plan of entering 25 markets by 2025. These are all signs that Chinese EV companies will shy away from the US market for a while, at least until the political animosity goes away. Being unable to sell in the world’s second-largest auto market is obviously not good news, but they have a lot of potential customers in Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.

“[The Chinese auto industry] for now will remain in a ‘watch and study’ mode and strategize accordingly. Mexico will be an important market and a critical production hub for the Americas region whether [the industry] eventually enters America or not,” says Xing.

I had been counting down the days until we’re able to drive Chinese EVs in the US and see how they compete with American cars on their home turf. I guess I’ll be in for a very long wait. 

Do you think this move will help or harm US domestic automakers in the long run? Let me know your thoughts at zeyi@technologyreview.com.

Now read the rest of China Report

Catch up with China

1. China started its annual parliamentary meeting today. It’s the highest-level of political meeting in China, and it’s where economic plans and other important policy signals are often released. So watch this space. (NBC News)

  • For the first time in 30 years, the country has scrapped the annual tradition where the premier briefs the press and answers questions. It was one of the only moments of access to China’s political leaders, and now it’s gone. (Reuters $)

2. A deepfake clone of a Ukrainian YouTuber is being used by Chinese people to express pro-Russia sentiments and sell Russian goods. (Voice of America News)

3. Hundreds of North Koreans are forced to work in Chinese seafood factories while enduring frequent beatings and sexual abuse. These factories supply major US retailers like Walmart and ShopRite. (New Yorker $)

4. The US government wants to stop data brokers from selling sensitive data to China and a few other adversaries. (Wall Street Journal $)

5. In tiny New York studios, American TikTok influencers are learning the tricks of livestream e-commerce from their Chinese counterparts. (Rest of World)

6. The US Department of Justice accused a Chinese chipmaker of stealing trade secrets five years ago. The company was just found not guilty in court. (Bloomberg $)

7. The number of patents filed by inventors in China has been growing rapidly—surpassing the US figure for the first time ever. (Axios)

Lost in translation

When a Chinese college graduate named Lu Zhi moved on from her first job after eight months at PDD (the Chinese e-commerce company that owns Temu), she didn’t realize the company would ask her to pay $36,000 back as a noncompete compensation. As the Chinese publication Caixin reports, Chinese tech companies, particularly PDD, have sparked outrage for how broad their noncompete agreements have become. 

It doesn’t just affect key personnel in critical positions. Almost any employee, no matter how junior or peripheral their role, has to sign such an agreement when hired. To enforce the agreement, PDD has even hired private detectives to follow former employees around and film their commute to the new workplace. People are questioning whether these companies have gone too far in the name of protecting their trade secrets.

One more thing

The new Dune 2 movie is barely out, and people are already making memes comparing the plot to the real-life geopolitical situation between the US, China, and Taiwan. Is it accurate? I’ll report back after I watch it.

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