Blog: Where Is China’s Elon Musk?

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has made significant advancements with the successful recovery of the first stage of the Starship rocket using giant mechanical arms, which eliminate the need for a supporting frame, aiding weight reduction, minimizing maintenance time, and hastening reuse. [para. 1] Separately, U.S. computer scientist John M. Jumper was recognized with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in leveraging AI for protein structure prediction, sharing the honor with Demis Hassabis and David Baker. [para. 2]

There is a growing curiosity about why China is not producing innovators like Musk or Jumper. This question can be examined through the lens of academia, focusing on eight key challenges affecting China's innovation output. [para. 3]

Firstly, funding allocation in China is skewed towards larger, established teams, leaving smaller, potentially more innovative teams underfunded, unlike in the case of OpenAI, which had fewer than 100 people but achieved remarkable results. [para. 4][para. 5] The project application process in China requires predicting successful outcomes from the start, which curtails innovation, as it is fundamentally an unpredictable process. [para. 6] Researchers spend excessive time on creating project proposals, and a historical performance-based evaluation could be more efficient. [para. 7]

Moreover, the current system doesn't promote originality. Even though there's a category for originality in proposals, it’s seen as risky, leading applicants to play it safe to ensure approval, which stymies groundbreaking ideas. [para. 8] The evaluation periods in China are short, often lasting one to three years, which encourages minor adjustments over pursuing long-term projects with a potential for substantial impact. [para. 9]

Time management is a notable challenge due to additional tasks, and outstanding scholars often get promoted to administrative roles, which further diverts their attention from their research. [para. 10] The expansion of graduate enrollment has resulted in an increased student-to-professor ratio, potentially diluting mentoring quality as professors manage more students. The hiring market also pressures students to focus on short-term research or completely unrelated work. [para. 11][para. 12][para. 13]

The pre-university education system in China is heavily exam-oriented, leaving little room for extracurricular content, which can stifle broader learning and lead to high exam scores without corresponding research capabilities. [para. 14]

Despite earlier measures aimed at reducing the reliance on quantitative metrics for research evaluations, challenges in cultivating truly original research remain. While the number of researchers and the research environment have improved, more needs to be done to foster innovation that benefits the country. Hopefully, within the next decade, China will witness an upsurge in innovative and impactful research. [para. 15][para. 16] Zhang Junping, a professor from Fudan University’s School of Computer Science, offers these insights hoping to see positive changes in the future. [para. 17]