The United States has long been the world’s leading destination for ambitious scientific minds. But as China strengthens its ability to attract researchers and develop high-level scientific and technological talent, changes in funding, immigration policy and the treatment of Chinese-born scientists are beginning to alter the balance. A New York Times report examines how the competition for talent is becoming increasingly consequential for both countries.
In the competition for scientific and technological supremacy, one question has become increasingly important: who has the talent? For decades, the answer appeared straightforward. The United States attracted exceptional researchers from around the world, many of whom arrived as international students, pursued advanced degrees and eventually built their careers there. That system helped make American universities and research institutions a powerful magnet for scientific ambition.
Yet the advantage is no longer as unquestioned as it once was. Funding cuts, restrictive immigration policies and suspicion directed towards Chinese-born scientists are weakening some of the factors that made the United States the default destination. At the same time, China, despite serious shortcomings in its own academic system, is becoming a more credible alternative for scientists seeking research opportunities, institutional support and financial resources.
The contrast can be seen in two developments highlighted by The New York Times in recent months. This year’s four Fields Medal winners, recognised with one of mathematics’ highest honours, included two scholars born in China who had travelled to the United States for advanced studies. They flourished in the West and remain there.
Another example points in the opposite direction. Zhilin Yang, like many Chinese students, came to the United States for his graduate education. He received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon in 2019 and had opportunities to remain in the country. Instead, he returned to China with the determination to establish a company there. He founded Moonshot AI, which in July released Kimi K3, an impressive open-source artificial intelligence model that comes close to the performance of the best models made in America, while costing less.
Yang’s decision illustrates a shift in the attractiveness of China as a destination for scientific and technological enterprise. His doctoral thesis adviser, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, a computer science professor, described the continuing American advantage in attracting highly talented people but also acknowledged China’s growing appeal. “The U.S. still has a big, big advantage. We get the best people,” he said. “But China will become more attractive. In the A.I. space, it’s becoming very clear.”
China’s ability to recruit established scientists is also expanding. Omar Yaghi, who shared last year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, left the University of California, Berkeley, for Tsinghua University, where he will lead an institute using A.I. 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 institutions. Joshua Zahl, who collaborated with Hong Wang, one of this year’s Fields Medal winners, accepted a full-time professorship at Nankai University.
These developments represent significant gains for a country where Tu Youyou was the only scientist working in mainland to have received a Nobel Prize in a scientific category. One major factor behind China’s growing recruiting power is money, according to Dong Jielin, who researches Chinese science and technology policy. Two decades ago, scientists returning from abroad were expected to accept financial sacrifices in the name of serving the country. Today, Chinese universities can offer salaries competitive with those in Europe, together with generous relocation packages.
But financial resources alone do not settle the question of where exceptional young scientists will thrive. The debate surrounding this year’s Fields Medal winners brought that issue into sharp focus in China. The question raised in extensive Chinese media coverage and online discussion was whether China’s academic system can provide young researchers with the freedom, patience and tolerance for failure necessary to become exceptional scientists.
Hong Wang and Yu Deng, the two Chinese-born Fields Medal winners, entered Peking University in 2007. Deng, an International Mathematical Olympiad gold medalist, was admitted directly to the university’s mathematics programme. After his sophomore year, he transferred to M.I.T., earned his doctorate from Princeton and became a professor at the University of Chicago.
Deng said pursuing doctoral study abroad was common among Chinese students in basic science at the time. Chinese mathematics has improved substantially since then, he said, and publications by China-based researchers in leading mathematics journals have risen markedly.
Wang, now 35, entered Peking University at 16 to study earth and space sciences before transferring into mathematics a year later. She went to the École Polytechnique near Paris and subsequently pursued further graduate studies at M.I.T. In a video, she recalled that her doctoral adviser at M.I.T. listened patiently when she disagreed with others. “It helped me to gain confidence,” she said. She is now a professor at both New York University and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France.
After the Fields Medals were announced, Wang said in a video posted by the Simons Foundation that she had felt “a little discouraged” but had found professors in France and the United States who helped her gain confidence. She was not criticising Peking University, but the remark resonated in China, where many people associated “discouraged” with their own experiences in a highly competitive education system shaped by punishment and shame. The hashtag “discouraged” remains censored on Weibo.
The question of what enables talent to flourish also reaches back to the United States. Terence Tao, an Australian-born Fields medalist and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, described the United States as having once been “sort of the default, the no-brainer option”. Last year, the Trump administration’s suspension of federal funding to U.C.L.A. affected both his personal grant and an institute he helps lead. The funding was reinstated after a successful lawsuit, but Tao warned that abrupt disruptions could derail multiyear projects and damage researchers’ trust in the system.
“The best and brightest may not automatically come to the U.S. as they have for decades,” he said.
The scale of America’s dependence on international scientific talent is substantial. Foreign students received nearly 44 percent of the STEM doctorates awarded by American universities in 2023. Students from China earned 17 percent of all U.S. doctorates in science and engineering in 2020, while about 87 percent of Chinese recipients from 2005 to 2015 intended to remain in the United States, according to a 2023 study.
That pipeline is becoming less dependable. The number of visas issued to international students fell by roughly one-third in 2025. Last month, the Trump administration finalised a rule limiting how long foreign students can remain without applying for an extension. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the measure would keep them focused on their “primary purpose: completing their studies and returning home.”
For scientists weighing where to build their careers, the consequences of these changes are becoming tangible. Deng, 37, the 2026 Fields medalist, said many universities in China, the United States and elsewhere had contacted him. He was considering his options but planned to remain at the University of Chicago for now, with research, collaborators and quality of life all influencing his decision.
Asked whether he would still leave China for the United States if he were 20 today, Deng pointed to cuts in research funding and awareness of people affected by visa problems.
“If I were making the decision in China today,” he said, “I would think much more carefully about whether to come to the United States.”
The emerging competition is therefore no longer simply about which country can spend more on laboratories, universities or artificial intelligence. China can increasingly match the funding and infrastructure that attract prominent scientists. The more difficult challenge is reproducing the freedom, trust and institutional stability that allow young researchers to develop exceptional ideas. Those qualities remain among America’s strongest advantages, even as policies affecting funding and immigration place them under pressure.
The movement of scientists in both directions suggests that the global contest for scientific talent is becoming more fluid. The United States continues to possess a major advantage in attracting the world’s best people, while China is increasingly capable of persuading researchers to return, relocate or build their careers there. The decisions of scientists such as Yang, Yaghi, Wang and Deng illustrate different outcomes within that changing competition.
At its centre is a question that extends beyond individual careers: whether scientific leadership ultimately follows money and infrastructure, or whether it follows the institutions that give talented researchers the confidence and freedom to take intellectual risks. For decades, the United States benefited from being the obvious answer. The evidence presented by The New York Times suggests that, for the next generation of scientists, the answer may no longer be quite so certain.
