Not long ago, I interviewed Chinese multi-job writer Huan Yan, who wrote "I am a delivery driver in Beijing." China, seen through a diligent labor report by a young person 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 as a temp, as a part-timer or a self-employed person, or even as a customer. Yesterday's colleague was becoming today's villain and driving Chinese society forward like a giant gear.
The KBS Docu Insight "Talent war—China crazy about engineering," which aired last summer, shows a completely different face of China. China of DeepSeek and Tencent, Huawei and BYD, and Pony.ai, which shocked the world. China of "Invented in China," standing tall with semiconductors and AI, batteries and electric vehicles—not cheap "Made in China." While Korea's talent is being sucked into the black hole of "medical schools," China gathered a select few geniuses to grow basic science and, with tremendous pull, absorbed talent from around the world.
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 progress in chemistry, physics, mathematics, and engineering. As the AI order is constantly being reshuffled, Liang Wenfeng of "DeepSeek," the game-changer in this world, is now the dream role model for Chinese children.
Byeondongbulgeo (變動不居). The world never stops flowing and changing 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 other 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 for now, but there are great worries that the corporations that end up climbing the ladder of innovation built by U.S. geniuses will be Chinese.
In the middle of an ever fiercer AI battlefield, where will Korea go? Where are Korea's talents headed? The frame of "talent war," which contrasted Chinese and Korean classrooms over two installments, hits a sore spot.
"China crazy about engineering" and "Korea crazy about medical schools."
Based on the documentary, I met KBS producer Jeong Yong-jae, author of the book "Talent war," to examine 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 countries' people. How did you land on this agenda?
"I felt a lot of regret looking around me. We got as far as semiconductors, but I can't see where the economy is heading next. Even though we need to rally, conflicts are intensifying, and while everyone is floundering, all the talent is setting its course for medical schools and marching. It's not about developing new drugs to serve humanity, but a defensive reason—just a high income and a job without the fear of being laid off.
Think about it. Until the 1990s, talent went to physics and computer engineering, led growth, and technology corporations like Samsung and LG lifted the economy. We have come this far solely with talent and technology, since we have no oil like the Middle East and not many tourism resources like Europe. And at such a critical time, why have all other doors closed, leaving only the narrow door of "medical schools"... I was truly curious. The decisive trigger was the DeepSeek shock."
At the center of the DeepSeek whirlwind that swept the globe was a "homegrown" genius founder who appeared like a comet: Liang Wenfeng. DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng is a graduate of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, a homegrown engineering student who has never gone outside China.
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 upstart startup DeepSeek rattled the New York stock market by releasing a product that outperformed ChatGPT at roughly 10% of ChatGPT's development cost. That was in Jan. 2025, and it already feels like ages ago.
"In Jan. this year, Nvidia's stock plunged 16.97%. I was shocked to see $589 billion in Wall Street market cap evaporate. This is a huge harbinger! Who on earth is Liang Wenfeng? What's happening in Hangzhou? How did homegrown geniuses who have never been abroad come to lead innovation?
How are families and the state guiding and teaching them? Questions arose. I searched for BBC reports and overseas documentary materials, and to my surprise, 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 internally. They scout with huge signing bonuses, create good research environments, and cultivate new hires. But because it's a communist country, they don't want to put that forward openly."
-The global AI talent war is real. Here, an engineer making $1.35 million is suddenly poached for $13.5 million with bonuses and stock options. The scouting battles at OpenAI, Google, and Meta are fierce, too.
"China prepared early. They started a talent war. The world situation is so precarious that they only avoid the word 'war,' but they turned toward a republic of geniuses."
-You visited talent, professors, founders at Zhejiang University and Tsinghua University—China's so-called Stanfords—plus Yinzhou High School and families with elementary schoolers. What was it like on the ground?
"It's crazy there—that turned out to be true. China is serious about engineering. I was shocked from the moment we went to a home with a third grader. It was a 40-year-old public housing apartment in Hangzhou, less than 66 square meters, and the price topped 1.1 billion won. Very much like the birthplace of "Mencius' mother moved three times" education zeal. The fervor is similar to Seoul's Daechi-dong. On weekends, mom, dad, and a younger sister all come and wait at a coding academy an hour's drive away.
Only 5% of kids test into the small elite class, and the whole family is proud of it. The waiting room is filled with families like that. Both kids and parents assume that if you get into Zhejiang University's engineering school, a minimum annual salary of 100 million won is guaranteed (considering GNP is one-third of Korea's, that's triple). Even if you don't get a job, the startup environment is so good that if you fail, you can use that failure as a portfolio to get into a big company again."
-Having many political leaders with engineering backgrounds also helps in moving toward a "science and technology society." Xi Jinping studied chemical engineering at Tsinghua, and Premier Li Qiang studied agricultural machinery at Zhejiang, right?
"That's right. Former Premier Hu Jintao also came out of Tsinghua's engineering school. With such policymakers in place, they see "failure" in research projects as natural. In that sense, Korea's 99.5% success rate for national research projects is odd. It means they only pick projects that will work."
With a forward-leaning atmosphere and state backing, the kids said they're excited about their futures.
-Excited about their futures… what's the vibe like?
"Even small children sense the social mood. China has surged ahead in aerospace, AI, EVs, and batteries. There are many young science-and-engineering heroes. Wang Xing, who made a quadruped robot dog; Liang Wenfeng of DeepSeek; and there are many stars in batteries and drones. To draw an extreme comparison, if in Korea a dermatologist driving a Lamborghini on YouTube is the object of envy, in China scientists are that kind of figure.
Chinese kids are educated to see themselves as one of the gears that drive the nation. From that base—when the government is capable, capital is available, and there are many role models—what can't we do? You might call it swagger. In reality, that pleasant sense of efficacy and a rivalry with the United States seem to be working together to send the energy soaring."
Even in the reporting process, while they were finicky at first, once you're inside the network, the "guanxi" culture of treating guests extremely well to make them part of your side seemed to function as their own form of inclusivity and expansiveness.
-That's typical of a nation where everything is growing.
"Right. Some in the science community said this: They don't think the good old days when we go to China for a foot massage are coming back. With new technologies updating every year, global rankings rising, and export results rolling in—'what can't we do?'—the era when labs stayed lit all night; China now feels similar to Korea's 1980s science-and-engineering vibe."
-On the other hand, China's growth shows two faces. In AI and advanced industries, talent gathers and high earners abound, but the country's manual laborers at the center of global logistics are consumed as the infrastructure of consumer society, their days and nights flipped for 12 hours a day. I interviewed Chinese multi-job worker Huan Yan, author of "I am a delivery driver in Beijing," a few months ago, and I heard that, including the tang ping (lying flat) generation who lie down to avoid such exploitation, the worries of college-educated young people suffering from job scarcity are deep.
"As you point out, it seems like a hallmark of a rapidly growing country."
The coexistence of "Made in China," which rotates essential workers in manufacturing and logistics as "replaceable labor," and "Invented in China," buoyed by AI heroes under global spotlights—the sight of a socialist China's present, with extremes of class propping up high-speed growth with their whole bodies.
-A parent's remark that an acceptance letter to engineering school can't be converted into money was also striking.
"Universities run centered on engineering, and only STEM fields have good job prospects, so that path becomes the truth. Some kids do want to become doctors, but that's truly a sense of duty. In the public health care system, doctors' pay isn't high. Engineers make more than three times as much. The wealth rankings are topped by young tech entrepreneurs. So Chinese parents' hearts are similar."
All of that, he said, is the result of the state's setting. Ironically, Korean 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 achieved thoroughly under state support.
-Looking at China's "14th five-year plan (2021–2025)," which aims to intensively foster 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 in 2024. They really hit the gas in the early 2010s. They pushed the policy without wavering. DeepSeek wasn't launched by hiring a Stanford computer science professor and using that technology. Liang Wenfeng has never been abroad. It's the result of China's public education.
Until then, under the "Thousand Talents Plan," China brought in talent from overseas with fearsome determination. The plan began in 2008. Judging that manufacturing alone couldn't catch up with the United States, they attracted a large number of scholars from the English-speaking world to China. During the global financial crisis, many professors were unemployed, and China used that opening to bring science-and-engineering scholars to universities and research institutes with exceptional treatment."
-What kind of geniuses came?
"Starting with Chinese scholars working at overseas institutes, later Turing Award and Nobel-level brains with Ivy League tenure came in. Some 7,000 over 10 years. Those scholars replicated the research they did in the United States and created so-called 'shadow labs' in China, and with that process, they caught up with the U.S. faster.
Professor Yao Qizhi, a Turing Award winner, also came at the government's request, led Tsinghua University's computer engineering department, and created the so-called genius track "Yao Class." Talent from that Yao Class founded Pony.ai, a leading corporation in autonomous driving technology. Turing Award winner Hopcroft also created the "Turing Class" at Peking University. Universities compete with each other to strategically produce such top-tier talent."
Korean scientists were no exception in receiving recruitment offers.
"I recently went to an academy seminar funded by SK, and about 30 engineering scholars 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 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 freely hire 2,000 Ph.D.s; when you add a social atmosphere that treats scientists like heroes, it's hard to turn down.
-Those are hard conditions to refuse.
"In truth, engineers are moved more by research environments than by salaries. In broadcasting terms, it's like being told to use the full production budget to make a great program and cast top stars at will—the stage is set. Wouldn't all creators dream of that environment? More than a high salary, they are moved by a good environment, like-minded colleagues, and a vision. But Korean scientists who have endured on patriotism and pride were shocked when the R&D budget was cut last year. 'Why am I here being treated like this…'
Sitting professors will still hesitate to go to China, but those nearing retirement have less to agonize over. Rather than tending flowers, it's better to continue their research in China. Professor Lee Young-baek, a world-renowned scholar in metamaterials who went to Fudan University as a distinguished professor, is such a case… Meeting him, he truly seemed highly satisfied."
-What kind of treatment do scientists actually receive?
"When I went in the evening to cover Professor Lee Young-baek, a distinguished professor at Fudan University, he was staying in a five-star hotel suite. All services provided were unlimited, and I felt every hotel staffer treated Professor Lee like an imperial envoy. China strategically favors scientists. There is a system called "academician." 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, and some 120 new academicians are selected each year. They receive unlimited bonuses, tens of billions of won in research equipment support, project support averaging 24 billion won, and guaranteed research activity until age 75.
-Do many young Korean science talents also choose to go to China?
"No. They go to the United States in large numbers. That's because the talent China wants to scout is at the overseas luminary level. China transfuses immediately usable technology and education from those luminaries. They are already consistently cultivating young talent domestically, so demand for that group isn't high."
With the two-track approach of cultivation and scouting, China's science and technology have now grown so fearsomely that the direction of technology transfer, which once flowed from the West to China, has already reversed. For example, Volkswagen is learning EV technology by partnering with local Chinese corporations; Toyota is collaborating 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 amounts to twice its defense spending, and as a result, in the United Kingdom's "Nature Index," which assesses the world's scientific research capacity, a stunning eight of the top 10 institutions are Chinese research institutes.
No. 1 is the Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 2 is Harvard, and No. 10 is the Max Planck Institutes, with all ranks in between occupied by Chinese universities and research institutes. Seoul National University is No. 52, and KAIST is No. 81.
-If the two tracks for talent are cultivation and recruitment, with scouting handled by the "Thousand Talents Plan" for luminary-level scholars and cultivation handled by small-elite genius education… it also feels like weaponizing technical manpower.
"It's similar to stockpiling armaments for war. At Yinzhou High School in Zhejiang, I asked about the competition team track and the innovation track (only 40 selected out of 2,000 students). 'Isn't there criticism that this is discrimination against students?' The answer I heard was striking.
'These kids are not children of Chinese Communist Party cadres or the rich. The small classes are open fairly to anyone. We are helping kids with talent in science and technology within public education.' Just as kids good at soccer or music get special lessons, science prodigies have the right to specialized education. Not a sense of alienation but a pragmatic distinction…"
-In a way, the system is like incubating K-pop artists in Korea. The only difference is that management leads in Korea while the state leads in China…
"Yes. That's why many Korean engineering professors are dissatisfied. Culture and arts matter, but science and technology are highly direct national strategic resources. It's a matter of national fate and survival, so early cultivation is urgent."
-In a race that has moved from space development and nuclear weapons competition to AI competition, I worry Korea may be far too late.
"Listening to experts, we're very late, but it's not impossible. For now, our talent is flowing out to the United States in large numbers, but they say that's not a huge problem either. China was able to catch up quickly by building domestic 'shadow labs' the way they learned in the United States. The issue isn't people going out; it's getting them to come. China's 'Thousand Talents Plan' had clear compensation and incentives; Korea does not.
If someone makes 500 million in the United States and Korea offers 100 million won, who would come? Emphasizing patriotism isn't effective. But Korea is a country with technological prowess and a solid 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 pour in capital like China or the United States, but given our GDP size, we can catch up sufficiently."
-I learned for the first time through this that Korean scientists were the first to develop an autonomous vehicle driving on wet roads in the 1980s.
"That's right. Former Korea University Professor Han Min-hong's team had world-class Autonomous Driving technology. In 1995, they staged the world's first demonstration of an autonomous unmanned car running at 100 kilometers per hour on a rain-soaked highway. He was Korea's Elon Musk. At the time, Mercedes-Benz and the Volkswagen Group came from Germany to learn this technology, and I hear many of the technologies now in use were already developed by the Korean research team back then. A K Tesla could have come first."
It was taken for granted that top students flocked to physics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and computer engineering, and the pride of engineers overflowed on campuses—the heyday of K engineering in the 1980s and 1990s—but it ended as Korea entered IMF bailout programs. The IMF foreign exchange crisis completely changed Korean society's value system.
-The IMF set back nearly every social system.
"In particular, the unemployment and job losses back then bred tremendous deprivation and anxiety. People learned that lifetime employment was a fleeting dream, and preferences for professional jobs—doctors, lawyers, civil servants—grew. You could say the fear a society experienced changed the next generation's dreams. Having gone through the IMF crisis, the idea that 'my doctor friend doesn't get laid off' became firm, and that contracted future outlook was passed down to their children."
-Job-loss trauma devoured the future.
"Exactly. After the IMF crisis and as the high-growth era quietly ended, society became one where protecting what you have mattered. In reporting, I found that kids want stability. College is not the starting line for pursuing dreams but the terminal won after grinding for 12 years… it functions only as title and reward. The ultimate trophy is medical school. Holding that trophy at an alumni gathering or meeting relatives during holidays—you can square your shoulders… draw all the envy…
Moreover, what matters more to young people is that once you get into medical school, there are no more tests. After internship and residency and earning board certification, even if you just shoot lasers in a dermatology clinic, an annual salary of 100–200 million won is basic. But if you go to engineering school, uncertainty starts all over again. To pursue your dreams, you have to pass the hiring gateway; you have to choose whether to go abroad to study; if a startup fails, you can lose three to four years…"
-Is the core uncertainty?
"Right. In Korea, where college is perceived as compensation, smart kids see two paths. A big gift basket called medical school and a random box called engineering. If it goes well, you could become like Kim Beom-su or Lee Chan-jin, but that's an old model, too. So Korea's current medical school boom is not about money but an obsession with stability. That's the biggest difference from China. The essence of life is challenge and experience, but we're teaching the next generation the opposite."
If you hear 'live stably' repeated, the sparkle disappears from your eyes. Chinese teenagers flash with the light of their individual ambitions to become the next Liang Wenfeng or the next Jack Ma, while teenagers in Seoul's Daechi-dong cram district have bleary, tired eyes, running only on the narrow path of medical school, producer Jeong Yong-jae lamented.
As if by sequence, Korea has seen a spectacle over the past three years in which medical schools took all the regular-admission spots once occupied by the top 20 science-and-engineering departments. Star tutors proudly explain that if Daechi-dong is the national training center of private education, medical school is both the gold medal and an Hermès bag. In an era without guaranteed tenure and anxiety about AI threatening jobs, a licensed medical degree is the most stable life jacket an individual can choose.
China to engineering, Korea to medical schools—each waging an education war for good jobs, calculating the cost-effectiveness of a finite life. The difference is that the former's ultimate survival technology aims to lead the global tech war, while the latter aims to live in a nice apartment with stable high income without retirement.
China is a country that has fought many wars, and Jeong Yong-jae added that its philosophy seems to have grown in scale through that history of conquest. "They explain even ordinary issues by citing the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. They are hopeful even when it seems unlikely to work. For example, even if you wonder whether an earthquake early warning system will work, they're excited because they got investment. Almost every founder is like that."
-Did you feel that spirit of change across the whole city?
"When I first arrived in Shenzhen, it felt like scenes from the movie "Inception" were unfolding. My office is in Yeouido, so I'm used to supertall towers, but Shenzhen's scale was truly overwhelming. I felt tremendous dynamism and openness. Not traditional conglomerates but giant new corporations like Tencent and Alibaba dominated the skyline, even more so.
On the streets, there was hardly any sound of cars or motorcycles. BYD and all vehicles were running on electric batteries. People say that when Korea's Samsung overtook Sony, it skipped analog and seized digital. China skipped credit cards and internal combustion cars and went straight to QR and EVs. Even illiterate grandmothers running street stalls pay 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."
-Finally, after viewing a China crazy about engineering and a Korea crazy about medical schools, do you have any further thoughts? Please also share your view on "being mad in a healthy way" and on talent.
"I have never seen unhappy talent. In the process of pursuing what's fun, careers deepen and the desire to leave a mark in history also seems to arise. The talent we saw in China looked happy. They were crazy about what they love. Whether they made a fortune or failed, gratitude toward those who invested in their ideas, trust in colleagues who are crazy together, and joy in the outcomes created astonishing energy.
From my reporting, Korea doesn't flock to medical schools because people are unusually worldly. A massive inherited anxiety has simply gathered toward guaranteed stability. In a big view, talent is someone who uses the pass to their life in diverse, happy ways. Only a society that responds sensitively to those concerns and rewards them can have talent. I hope comments with no path like 'medical school over SKY,' 'engineering is a waste with that score,' and 'where will you get a job?' no longer distort our future."