Not long ago, I interviewed Huan Yan, a Chinese multi-job writer who wrote "I am a delivery driver in Beijing." China, seen through the diligent labor reportage of a young man who worked in manufacturing and logistics, was too big, too fierce, changing too fast, and betraying too often. It didn't look easy to live as a worker or a boss, in management or temp work, as a part-timer or self-employed person, or even as a customer. Yesterday's colleague was turning into today's villain, driving Chinese society forward like a giant gear.
The KBS Docu Insight "War for talent—China crazy about engineering," which aired last summer, shows a completely different face of China. The China of DeepSeek and Tencent, Huawei and BYD, Pony.ai that shocked the world. Not the low-priced "Made in China," but the China of "Invented in China," standing tall with semiconductors and AI, batteries and electric vehicles. While Korea's talent is being sucked into the black hole of "medical schools," China gathered an elite few geniuses to build basic science and absorbed talent from around the world with tremendous pull.
As in the past, a socialist dictatorship can use abundant support as a weapon to bind scientists to its side, and China has made dazzling strides in chemistry, physics, mathematics, and engineering. As the AI order is continually reshuffled, Liang Wenfeng of "DeepSeek," the game-changer of this world, is now the dream role model for children in China.
Byeondongbulgeo (變動不居). The world keeps flowing and changing without stopping even for a moment, and China is boldly embracing that change and bulking up. From the start of the year through Nov., China's trade surplus was $1.0759 trillion. No country in the world has ever reached that scale. Recently, Trump accepted Jensen Huang's view and allowed sales of Nvidia's H200 in China. The United States still holds a technological edge, but there is growing concern that it will ultimately be Chinese corporations climbing the ladder of innovation built by American geniuses.
In the thick of an ever more brutal AI battlefield, where is Korea headed? Where are Korea's talented people going? The frame of "War for talent," which contrasted China and Korea's education scenes over two episodes, lands painfully.
"China crazy about engineering" and "Korea crazy about medical schools."
We met KBS producer Jeong Yong-jae, author of the book "War for talent" based on the documentary, to look into the current state of China's advanced technology.
-The headline "China crazy about engineering, Korea crazy about medical schools" is shocking. If you add the United States crazy about lawsuits, it seems to clearly touch on the desires and value systems of the three nations' people. How did you put this agenda forward?
"I felt very frustrated looking around me. We made it as far as semiconductors somehow, but I don't see where the economy heads next. Even when we should be rallying, conflicts are intensifying, and while everyone is floundering, the talented are all setting their course for medical schools and marching. It's not even about developing new drugs and serving humanity, just defensive reasons like high income and not worrying about getting laid off.
Think about it. Until the '90s, talented students went to physics and computer engineering, drove growth, and technology corporations like Samsung and LG lifted the economy. We got here only through talent and technology, since we don't have a drop of oil like the Middle East or rich tourism resources like Europe. And especially at a time this critical, why have all other doors closed and only the narrow door of "medical school" remained? I was really curious. The decisive trigger was the DeepSeek shock."
At the center of the DeepSeek whirlwind that swept the world was a "homegrown" genius founder who appeared like a comet: Liang Wenfeng. DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng is from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou and is a homegrown engineering student who has never been abroad.
Hangzhou, which has emerged as a core AI hub, has produced six promising technology corporations including DeepSeek, Unitree, and DeepRobotics—the so-called "Hangzhou Six Dragons (六龙)"—and has risen as China's Silicon Valley.
-China's startup DeepSeek rattled the New York stock market by rolling out a product that surpassed ChatGPT at roughly 10% of ChatGPT's development cost. That was in Jan. 2025, but it already feels like ages ago.
"This Jan., Nvidia's stock plunged 16.97%. I was shocked to see $589 billion in Wall Street market cap evaporate. This is an enormous harbinger! Who on earth is Liang Wenfeng? What is happening in Hangzhou? How did homegrown geniuses who have never left China come to lead innovation?
How do families and the state guide and teach them? Questions arose. I searched BBC and overseas documentary materials, and surprisingly, there was nothing. There was no content at all on China's IT education and talent cultivation system."
-Why is that?
"I learned by trying. Booking was really hard. We knocked on Huawei and Xiaomi, but reporting wasn't easy. The Chinese corporations we know all have small elite genius tracks in-house. They scout with huge premiums, set up good research environments, and develop new hires. But as a communist country, they don't want to trumpet that publicly."
-The global AI talent war is real. Here, an engineer making $1.35 million gets poached in an instant with a $13.5 million package plus bonus and stock options. OpenAI, Google, and Meta are in fierce recruiting battles, too.
"China prepared early. It started the war for talent. The global situation is so precarious that they only watch their wording on 'war,' but they pivoted toward a republic of geniuses."
-You visited talents, professors, and founders at Zhejiang University and Tsinghua University—China's Stanfords—along with Yinzhou High School and families with elementary students. What was it like on the ground?
"'Crazy about it' turned out to be true. China is earnest about engineering. I was shocked from the moment we visited a home with a third-grader. It was a 40-year-old public apartment in Hangzhou, less than 66 square meters, priced over 1.1 billion won. Fitting for the ancestral land of Mencius's mother moving three times for education. The fervor for education resembles Daechi-dong. On weekends, the whole family—mom, dad, and a younger sister—waits while the child attends a coding academy an hour's drive away.
Only 5% of kids test in to the small elite class, and the whole family is proud of it. Families like that fill the waiting room. Both child and parents assume that getting into Zhejiang's engineering school guarantees at least 100 million won in starting salary (considering GNP is a third of Korea's, that's triple). Even without taking jobs, the startup environment is excellent, and they say if you fail, you can use that failure as a portfolio to join a big company again."
-Having many political leaders from engineering backgrounds must also help move toward a "science and technology society." Xi Jinping is from Tsinghua's chemical engineering, and Premier Li Qiang is from Zhejiang's agricultural machinery engineering, right?
"Right. Former President Hu Jintao was also an engineering graduate from Tsinghua. With such policymakers in place, 'failure' in research projects is seen as natural. In that sense, Korea's 99.5% success rate in national research projects is strange. It means they pick only the projects that will work."
With an enterprising mood and state backing, even the kids were said to be excited about their futures.
-Excited about their futures… what's the vibe?
"Even young kids sense the social mood. China has surged ahead in aerospace, AI, EVs, and batteries. There are many young STEM heroes. Wang Xing, who made a quadruped robot dog; Liang Wenfeng of DeepSeek; and many stars in batteries and drones. In an extreme comparison, if the object of envy in Korea is a dermatologist driving a Lamborghini on YouTube, in China, scientists are that kind of figure.
Chinese children grow up taught that they are one of the gears that turn the nation. On that basis—competent government, capital, and ample role models—what can't we do? There's a kind of bravado. In reality, a joyful sense of efficacy and a rivalry with the United States seem to interact and send the energy soaring."
Listening to the reporting process, things were picky only at first; once you're inside the network, the "guanxi" culture of treating guests with utmost hospitality to make them your own seemed to function as a form of inclusiveness and expansiveness unique to them.
-That's a hallmark of a country where everything is growing.
"Right. Some in the scientific community said this: the good old days of going to China for a foot massage to feel good probably won't return. With new tech updated every year, global rankings climbing, and export results coming in, the feeling of 'what can't we do' and burning the midnight oil in labs—China now resembles Korea's engineering scene in the 1980s."
-On the other hand, China's growth has two faces. Talent gathers in AI and advanced industries and high earners abound, but domestic manual laborers at the center of global logistics toil 12 hours a day, day and night flipped, consumed as infrastructure of a consumer society. I interviewed Huan Yan, a Chinese multi-jobber who wrote "I am a delivery driver in Beijing," a few months ago, and I heard that the worries of college-educated young people suffering from job scarcity—along with the tangping set who lie flat to avoid such exploitation—are deep.
"As you point out, it seems like a feature of a rapidly growing country."
"Made in China," which reuses essential workers in manufacturing and logistics as "replaceable labor," and "Invented in China," buoyed by AI heroes in the global spotlight, coexist. China's present under socialism is one where the polar classes bear the weight with their whole bodies to support high-speed growth.
-A parent's remark that an engineering acceptance letter can't be converted into money was also striking.
"Universities revolve around engineering and hiring is strong only in STEM, so that path becomes the truth. Some kids want to be doctors, but that's truly a sense of duty. In the public health system, doctors' salaries aren't high. Engineers make more than triple doctors. The rich lists are topped by young tech entrepreneurs. So Chinese parents' hearts are similar."
All of it, he said, is the result of a state-set system. Ironically, Korea's culture and arts became global K-content because the state didn't intervene. Art feeds on freedom, but science feeds on money. China's science and technology have been built thoroughly under state support.
-Looking at China's "14th five-year plan (2021–2025)" to concentrate on semiconductors, AI, quantum information, and aerospace, it evokes Korea's past economic development plans and the Miracle on the Han River.
"That's technological rise. China's R&D budget is 721 trillion won (2024). They really hit the gas in the early 2010s. They pushed policy without wavering. DeepSeek wasn't launched by hiring a Stanford computer science professor and using that technology. Liang Wenfeng hasn't even been abroad. It's the result of China's public education.
Before that, under the "Thousand Talents Plan," China brought in talent from overseas with fierce determination. The plan started in 2008. Judging that manufacturing alone couldn't catch the United States, they attracted numerous Anglo-American scholars to China. During the global financial crisis, many professors were unemployed, and taking advantage of that gap, China lured STEM scholars to its universities and research institutes with exceptional treatment."
-What kind of geniuses came?
"Starting with Chinese scholars active in overseas institutes, later even Turing Award and Nobel level figures and Ivy League minds with tenure came. As many as 7,000 in 10 years. Those scholars brought the research they did in the U.S. straight to China and built so-called 'shadow labs,' and with that process they caught up with the U.S. faster.
Professor Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, a Turing Award laureate, also came at the government's request, led Tsinghua's computer science department, and created the so-called genius track "Yao Class." A graduate of that class founded Pony.ai, a leading corporation in autonomous driving technology. Turing Award winner John Hopcroft also created the "Turing Class" at Peking University. Universities competed and strategically produced the very best talents."
Korean scientists were no exception in receiving offers.
"I went to an academy seminar recently funded by SK, and about 30 engineering luminaries there said this. 'There's no one here who hasn't received a scouting offer from China. Why don't we go? Isn't it because of patriotism?' That shows how fast China's headhunters are moving."
What they offer is not just salary but a research package. They provide, with no strings attached, 10 to 100 times the amount a researcher needs, plus the authority to hire 2,000 Ph.D.s at will; when you add a social atmosphere that treats scientists like heroes, it's hard to refuse.
-Those are hard terms to refuse.
"In truth, engineers are swayed more by research conditions than salary. In TV terms, it's like being told to spend the full production budget to make a great show and cast top stars at will. Don't all creators dream of that? People are moved by good environments, like-minded colleagues, and vision more than big paychecks. But Korean scientists who've held on with patriotism and pride were shocked when the R&D budget was cut last year. 'Why am I here taking this treatment…'
Incumbent professors may still hesitate to go to China, but those nearing retirement have less to agonize over. Rather than tending flowers, it's better to go to China and continue their research. Professor Lee Young-baek, a world-renowned scholar in metamaterials who became a distinguished professor at Fudan University, is one such case… When I met him, he really seemed highly satisfied."
-What kind of待遇 do scientists actually receive?
"When I went to interview Professor Lee Young-baek, a distinguished professor at Fudan University, in the evening, he was staying in a five-star hotel suite. All services provided were unlimited, and I felt that every hotel staff member treated him like an imperial envoy. China strategically favors scientists. China has a system called academicians. Academicians are those who have reached the highest positions in science and technology among China's 1.4 billion people."
Academicians, who are granted both academic authority and administrative status, number about 1,800 as of 2025, with around 120 new academicians selected each year. They receive unlimited bonuses, research facility support worth billions of won, project support averaging 24 billion won, and guaranteed research activity until age 75.
-Do many young Korean science talents choose to go to China?
"No. They go largely to the U.S. Because the talents China wants to scout are at the overseas luminary level. China transfuses immediately usable technology and education from those luminaries. Young talent is already being consistently cultivated domestically in China, so demand on that side is limited."
With the dual tracks of cultivation and scouting, China's science and technology has grown frighteningly, and the direction of technology transfer—once flowing from the West to China—has already reversed. For example, Volkswagen works with local Chinese corporations to learn EV technology; Toyota collaborates with BYD and CATL in the battery institutional sector; and Honda learns from DeepSeek and Tencent.
China is still pouring a budget into science and technology that is nearly double its defense spending, and as a result, in the U.K.'s Nature Index, which evaluates global scientific research capacity, Chinese research institutions occupied a staggering eight of the top 10 spots.
No. 1 is the Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 2 is Harvard, No. 10 is the Max Planck Society, and all the ranks in between are taken by Chinese universities and research institutes. Seoul National University is 52nd, KAIST is 81st.
-If the two tracks for talent are cultivation and recruitment, with scouting handled at the scholar level through the "Thousand Talents Plan" and cultivation handled through elite-focused genius education… it also feels like weaponizing technical manpower.
"It's similar to stockpiling armaments for war. I went to Yinzhou High School in Zhejiang Province and asked about the competition team prep track and the innovation track (only 40 selected out of 2,000 students). 'Isn't there criticism that this is discrimination among students?' The answer I heard was striking.
'These kids are not children of Communist Party cadres or the wealthy. The elite track is open fairly to all. We help kids with talent in science and technology within public education.' Just as kids good at soccer or music receive special lessons, science prodigies have the right to specialized education. They said it is a practical distinction, not a source of alienation…"
-In a way, the system resembles Korea's K-pop artist incubating. In Korea, management companies lead it; in China, the state does—only that differs…
"Yes. That's why many Korean engineering professors are dissatisfied. Culture and arts are important, but science and technology are very direct national strategic resources. Since the nation's fate and survival are at stake, early cultivation is urgent."
-With the race moving from space development and nuclear arms competition to AI competition, it's worrisome that Korea may be far too late.
"Listening to experts, we are very late, but it's not impossible. For now, many of our talented people are leaving for the U.S., but that's not a big problem, they say. China also set up 'shadow labs' domestically, following the way it learned from the U.S., and caught up quickly. The issue isn't going; it's making them come. China had clear compensation and incentives through the 'Thousand Talents Plan,' but Korea does not.
If someone makes 500 million in the U.S. and Korea offers 100 million, who would come? Emphasizing patriotism isn't effective. But Korea is a country with technological prowess and a base. Semiconductors, AI, secondary batteries… The portfolio built by senior engineers is solid, and it's a country we can be proud of. We can't inject capital on the scale of China or the U.S., but with our GDP scale, we can catch up sufficiently."
-I learned for the first time that Korean scientists first developed an autonomous vehicle that could drive on wet roads in the '80s.
"Right. A former Korea University professor, Han Min-hong's team, had world-class Autonomous Driving technology. In 1995, they gave the world's first demonstration of an autonomous unmanned car running 100 kilometers per hour on a wet highway. He was Korea's Elon Musk. At the time, Germany's Mercedes-Benz and the Volkswagen Group came to learn this technology, and many of the technologies applied now were already developed by the Korean team then. It means a K-Tesla could have emerged first."
In the '80s and '90s, excellent students naturally flocked to physics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and computer engineering, and campuses brimmed with engineering pride. But the boom of K-engineering ended with the IMF bailout. The IMF foreign exchange crisis completely altered Korea's value system.
-The IMF set nearly every social system back.
"In particular, the unemployment and job loss then created enormous deprivation and anxiety. People realized lifetime jobs were a vain dream, and preferences surged for professions like doctors, lawyers, and civil servants. The fear a society experienced changed even the next generation's dreams. After the IMF, the notion 'my doctor friend doesn't get fired' became firm, and that shrunken view of the future was passed on to their children."
-Job-loss trauma ate the future.
"Right. After the IMF and the end of the high-growth era, we became a society where protecting what you have is key. In reporting, kids say they want stability. For them, university isn't a starting point to pursue dreams but a destination won after grinding for 12 years… it functions only as a title and reward. The final trophy is medical school. With that trophy in hand at a class reunion or meeting relatives during holidays, you can square your shoulders… draw envy from everyone…
Moreover, the bigger point for young people is that once you get into medical school, there are no more tests. After internship and residency and getting board-certified, even if you just fire lasers at a dermatology clinic, a 100 to 200 million won salary is standard. But if you go to engineering, uncertainty starts again. To pursue your dreams, you must pass the hiring gate, decide whether to study abroad, and if your startup fails, you can lose three to four years…"
-Is uncertainty the core?
"Right. In Korea, where university is perceived as a reward, bright kids face two paths: the big gift basket called medical school and the random box called engineering. If you do great, you might become like Kim Beom-su or Lee Chan-jin, but that's a past model. So Korea's current medical school craze isn't about money but an obsession with stability. That's the biggest difference with China. The essence of life is challenge and experience, but we teach our children the opposite."
If you hear "live stably" on repeat, the sparkle in your eyes disappears. Chinese teenagers flash with the light of their own ambitions, wanting to be the next Liang Wenfeng or Jack Ma, while teenagers in Daechi-dong's cram school district have bleary, tired eyes and run looking only at the narrow path called medical school, producer Jeong Yong-jae lamented.
As if by sequence, in Korea over the past three years, medical schools occupied all regular-decision slots for the top 20 STEM departments, an extraordinary scene. Star lecturers proudly explain that if Daechi-dong is the Taereung Training Center of private education, then medical school is both the gold medal and a Hermès bag. In an era without guaranteed tenure, amid anxiety that AI threatens jobs, medical school with a license is the most stable life vest an individual can choose.
China heads for engineering, Korea for medical school; both are waging education wars for good jobs, weighing the cost-effectiveness of finite lives. The difference is that the former's ultimate aim for survival skills is to lead the global tech war, while the latter's is to live in a nice apartment without retirement on a stable high income.
Producer Jeong Yong-jae added that China has fought many wars, and through that history of conquest, its philosophy seems to have grown in scale. "They explain even ordinary issues by citing 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms.' They are hopeful even when things seem unlikely. Say an earthquake early warning system—whether it can work or not—they're excited because they secured investment. Almost every founder is like that."
-Did you feel that current of change across the whole city?
"When I first arrived in Shenzhen, it felt like scenes from the movie 'Inception' were unfolding. I work in Yeouido, so I'm used to supertall towers, but Shenzhen's scale was truly overwhelming. I felt tremendous dynamism and openness, especially because the skyline is dominated not by traditional conglomerates but by giant new corporations like Tencent and Alibaba.
On the streets, there was hardly any sound of cars or motorcycles. Everything, including BYD vehicles, ran on electric batteries. People say that when Korea's Samsung surpassed Sony, it skipped analog and went straight to digital to catch up. China also skipped credit cards and internal-combustion cars and went straight to QR and EVs. Elderly street vendors who can't read still took payments with WeChat Pay on smartphones, and all entries and exits were automated with facial recognition without passwords or fingerprints. I wondered if this is what a future society looks like."
-Lastly, after looking at a China crazy about engineering and a Korea crazy about medical schools, do you have anything to add? Please also share your view on "being healthily crazy" and on talent.
"I have never seen an unhappy talent. As people pursue what they find fun, their careers deepen and they develop the drive to leave a mark on history. The talents we saw in China looked happy. They were crazy about what they loved. Whether they made a fortune or failed, their gratitude toward those who believed in their ideas and invested, their trust in colleagues equally obsessed, and their joy in the results created astonishing energy.
From our reporting, it's not that Korea is uniquely worldly and thus swarms to medical schools. A massive inherited anxiety has merely gathered toward guaranteed stability. Broadly speaking, a talent is someone who uses the ticket to their own life in diverse and happy ways. Only a society that responds sensitively to such concerns and rewards them can have talent. I hope that empty commentary like 'medical school over SKY,' 'engineering is a waste with that score,' or 'where will you get a job?' no longer distorts our future."