China's Decades-Old 'Genius Class' Pipeline Is Quietly Fueling Its AI Challenge To the US (ft.com)
- Reference: 0180720592
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/02/02/1359211/chinas-decades-old-genius-class-pipeline-is-quietly-fueling-its-ai-challenge-to-the-us
- Source link: https://www.ft.com/content/68f60392-88bf-419c-96c7-c3d580ec9d97?accessToken=zwAAAZweolfdkc9o9gOSiL9BnNOWx8PVgOydlw.MEYCIQDeatJc3sMRq2YeDoTjSWuuvWievn8l4rklu-i_eERUiwIhAPfOWTnlh6rHjskMyzm0CItlDZtaZjWhaxHHkMQaQYVt&segmentId=e95a9ae7-622c-6235-5f87-51e412b47e97&shareType=enterprise&shareId=c8abb097-a2c5-4b7a-953e-f46a99ec5076
Graduates of these programs include the founder of ByteDance, the leaders of e-commerce giants Taobao and PDD, the billionaire behind super-app Meituan, the brothers who started Nvidia rival Cambricon, and the core engineers behind large language models at DeepSeek and Alibaba's Qwen. DeepSeek's research team of more than 100 was almost entirely composed of genius-class alumni when the startup released its R1 reasoning model last year at a fraction of the cost of its international rivals.
The system traces to the mid-1980s, when China first sent students to the International Mathematical Olympiad and a handful of top high schools began creating dedicated competition-track classes. China now graduates around five million STEM majors annually -- compared to roughly half a million in the United States -- and in 2025, 22 of the 23 students it sent to the International Science Olympiads returned with gold medals. The computer science track has overtaken maths and physics as the most popular competition subject, a shift that accelerated after Beijing designated AI development a "key national growth strategy" in 2017.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/68f60392-88bf-419c-96c7-c3d580ec9d97?accessToken=zwAAAZweolfdkc9o9gOSiL9BnNOWx8PVgOydlw.MEYCIQDeatJc3sMRq2YeDoTjSWuuvWievn8l4rklu-i_eERUiwIhAPfOWTnlh6rHjskMyzm0CItlDZtaZjWhaxHHkMQaQYVt&segmentId=e95a9ae7-622c-6235-5f87-51e412b47e97&shareType=enterprise&shareId=c8abb097-a2c5-4b7a-953e-f46a99ec5076
critical thinking? (Score:3)
> China now graduates around five million STEM majors annually -- compared to roughly half a million in the United States
That's only double per capita, which is not as bad as I would have expected given how K-12 education is suffering a lot of collateral damage due to the culture war.
Re:critical thinking? (Score:4, Insightful)
What does per capita matter in this context though? They have an additional 4.5 million STEM majors entering the workforce annually. They have elite programmes producing more highly skilled graduates. It's clearly paying off too, based on how rapidly they are overtaking us.
It's not just an economic threat, it's an ideological one. A lot of young people in Europe and the US are despairing and how Western democracy is failing them.
Re: (Score:2)
This is why pretty much every major 20th century technology was invented in the US (telephony, movies, semiconductors, aerospace, the internet etc.).
Telephony was invented in the 19th century by a Canadian born in Scotland who ultimately became a US citizen. The work was apparently split between the US and Canada. Scotland is also one of those places that had a disproportionate number of inventors -- if you look a little earlier to the Industrial Revolution, especially, you'll note a lot of Scots.
in the US (Score:4, Insightful)
right wing nutjobs are trying to force the teaching of creationism instead of science
Re:in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep in the South now it is all about getting the ten commandments into every classroom. Pretty crazy given the constitution of the country mandates separation of church & state. But in the south, the christians are all about the church becoming the state.
Re: in the US (Score:1)
The constitution actually does not mandate a separation between church and state though. It just says congress can't force a religion.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The only people who constantly talk about genitals and gender are republicans. I went all morning without thinking about trans people until your post. Why can't you stop thinking about the subject?
Re: (Score:2)
I'll tell you why: because he's afraid of Lola. If you're old enough, you've heard the song Lola by The Kinks. It's a song about a person "who walks like a woman, but talks like a man," and Republicans are afraid - terrified - of falling for a guy in drag, because that would mean they're gay, and that's bad, m'kay? So if women are clearly women, and guys are clearly guys, then they don't have to worry about getting suckered into kissing someone they wouldn't normally kiss. Hence, culture wars focused on
Re: (Score:2)
This supposed to be "news for nerds", not where to post whack-job bs spouted by the network that paid about three-quarters of a billion dollars because it was proven in court that they LIED, and by someone that everyone other than you says should be institutionalized...
Re: in the US (Score:1)
China has explicitly stated they are embedding estrogen hormone-like chemicals into the cheap, toxic, plastic garbage they send over here. They want to feminize and weaken us as part of their "Unrestricted Warfare" strategy.
I'd hate to be number 23 (Score:5, Insightful)
> 22 of the 23 students it sent to the International Science Olympiads returned with gold medals.
Holy carp. And yet here at /. there are still scads of posters convinced that the Chinese can only copy what we 'superior intellects' in the West do.
Re: (Score:2)
School competitions are based heavily on memorization. Though I wouldn't underestimate that, people who spend 1000s of hours training for STEM are going to be better at it than people spending 1000s of hours training playing video games and football. China's problem is probably that top-down control can never let the talent run, seeing Jack Ma be disappeared was probably not very inspirational to those Olympiad winners
Is this circular reasoning? (Score:3)
First, I haven't read the article. If someone has a non-paywalled source, it would be appreciated. In any case, this seems to be circular reasoning. That is, if the students were selected by this system of schools because they excel, then how does one know that the reason they excel are reasons that are independent of the school? In other words, proof of the independence of the excellence is not taking students who are already excelling and proving that they excel, but taking students who are performing poorly and then demonstrating that they can excel.
Also, this high degree of achievement has also been demonstrated with students who graduate from Harvard. I do know that a study exists to find whether the students who were selected by Harvard would have succeeded, regardless of the education they received at the university. The answer, if I remember correctly, was yes they would. I tried finding this using a Google search and couldn't find it. Because i have a real job (trademarked), I don't have a lot time to spend on it. So, if someone recalls this famous study and could a link, it would also be appreciated.
Re: Is this circular reasoning? (Score:1)
The point isn't about finding out if Chinese kids are naturally smarter than US kids, the point is they are churning out 10x the number of STEM grads!!!! Oh well, let's see if those big brains can outsmart a nuke bomb!
People as state assets (Score:2)
This chinese government views people as assets to be 'managed' by the state, rather than individuals who have their own wants and needs.
Meanwhile (Score:1)
The USA is on the cusp of bringing back leaded gasoline to pwn those annoying libs.
Re: Meanwhile (Score:5, Insightful)
And polio.
Re: (Score:2)
don't forget "Make Measles Great Again"