On July 23, 2026, Wang Hong and Deng Yu lifted the Fields Medal at the same ceremony in Philadelphia. It was the first time mathematicians holding Chinese nationality had won the prize — and not just one, but two contemporaries sharing the podium at once. When the news reached China, the discussion ran beyond the mathematics itself to another question: where were they educated?
The answer to that question happens to reveal a trend more worth remembering than the Fields Medals themselves.
Chinese Faces, One After Another
Wang Hong entered Peking University at 16, completed her undergraduate studies in China, went to France for advanced training, then to MIT for her PhD, and became a tenured professor at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES) at 29. Deng Yu took a similar but distinct path — starting at Peking University, completing his undergraduate degree at MIT, and earning his PhD at Princeton. Both paths began in China.
Shift the lens from mathematics to AI and the same pattern repeats. Tang Jie of Zhipu AI moved from Tsinghua undergraduate to professor to founder — the entire chain completed domestically. Liang Wenfeng of DeepSeek earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science at Zhejiang University, worked in quantitative trading after graduation, and then challenged the AI frontier — with no study-abroad experience at all. Yang Zhilin of Moonshot AI did his undergraduate work at Tsinghua and his PhD at CMU, then returned to China immediately after graduation to start a company — no experience at American tech giants, nor at Chinese ones. His company's CTO Zhang Yutao holds a PhD from Tsinghua and went straight into entrepreneurship upon graduation — a textbook case of deep domestic cultivation.
Widen the frame a little further and Moonshot AI's Wu Yuxin represents yet another route: Tsinghua undergraduate → graduate study at CMU → Meta FAIR, where he co-proposed Group Normalization with Kaiming He and created Detectron2, a landmark tool in computer vision, before returning to China to co-found a company. He is the version that reads "start at Tsinghua → prove yourself at a top overseas lab → return home to build."
Their training paths differ in every particular, but they point to the same conclusion: China's education system is producing, in volume, talent capable of competing on the world's top stages. Whether the route is "purely domestic," "overseas training followed by return," or "cross-field entrepreneurship," each of them has found a tempo of their own.
From Brain Drain to Brain Circulation
Looking only at surface numbers, the "drain" of Chinese talent is indeed a common narrative frame. Among science and engineering graduates of Tsinghua University and Peking University, a substantial share goes abroad for advanced study, and many of them stay. This narrative has been invoked repeatedly over the past two decades and easily produces the impression that Chinese education is sewing wedding dresses for others.
But an analysis published on July 24, 2026 by Hengshui (the Weibo account Baorong Wanwu Hengshui) offers a different frame: understand "brain drain" as an intermediate stage, not an endpoint.
His argument is not complicated: a quick tour of the history of science and technology shows that nearly every sci-tech power has passed through this stage. In the early 20th century, America's scientific strength lagged far behind Europe's, and large numbers of future Nobel laureates received advanced training in Germany, Britain and elsewhere — in fact, roughly 30–40% of America's Nobel laureates in science are immigrants who received their basic education in their home countries and made their breakthroughs in the United States. Of Japan's 20-plus Nobel laureates, most have backgrounds of overseas advanced study. Britain, France and Germany show a similar picture.
The complete chain of this pattern is: build foundations at home → train at top overseas platforms → make world-class contributions → bring honor to the home country and inspire the next generation → feed back into the elevation of domestic research.
This is not a simple linear process. Every link in the chain requires conditions: the quality of domestic basic education must be high enough that the foundations are genuinely "portable"; overseas platforms must be open enough that real learning can happen; and most critically, the home country must have enough industrial space and research environment to draw these people back — or to make those who stay abroad willing to give back.
From Wang Hong to Liang Wenfeng, from Deng Yu to Yang Zhilin, these people do not offer a single answer but a set of diverse samples. The purely domestic route has produced results; overseas training plus return has produced results; cross-field entrepreneurship has produced results too. This is not coincidence — it is the system at work.
"The international circulation of talent is the norm. Early on, build foundations at home → train at top overseas platforms → make world-class contributions → bring honor, results and inspiration for the next generation back to the home country. This 'brain circulation' ultimately feeds back into the elevation of domestic research. A truly strong system cultivates such globally top-tier talent, takes pride in them, and is in the end made stronger by them."
Three Paths Validated at Once
Widen the window a little more and what is being validated is not merely the question of "whether they come back." It validates three paths simultaneously:
The first is the purely domestic path. Liang Wenfeng and Tang Jie walked this road — the entire process completed inside China, with no overseas experience, yet producing world-class products and scholarly contributions. The very existence of this path says something: China's basic education and research soil can now cultivate top talent independently, without the need for any overseas "gilding" before results appear.
The second is the overseas-training-then-return path. Yang Zhilin, Wu Yuxin, Wang Hong and Deng Yu all underwent high-level training abroad, then either returned to China to found companies or became Chinese faces in the international academy. This path is the most complete version of "brain circulation" — input, transformation, output.
The third is the cross-field entrepreneurship path. Liang Wenfeng jumped from quantitative finance to AI large models; Yang Zhilin leapt straight from academia into entrepreneurship. What they share is the ability to switch tracks itself — and that ability speaks to the richness of China's industrial ecology, where talent can change careers, can trial-and-error, and can find a landing point.
The Water Has Not Yet Peaked
Hengshui closed his analysis with one line: "I know you're in a hurry, but hold your horses — in the future, you'll have plenty more chances to be in a hurry, slowly."
The context is a longer-term judgment: China's talent output is nowhere near its peak. Wang Hong's and Deng Yu's Fields Medals are a signal, but not the endpoint. Liang Wenfeng's and Yang Zhilin's AI breakthroughs are another signal, and likewise not the endpoint.
Put together, these signals point to a structural change that is underway but not yet fully perceived: China has moved from being a "talent-exporting country" to a "talent-circulating country" — talent is generated here, goes out to compete in the world, and then returns or gives back in various forms.
The View from Deng Yu — Someone Ahead of You Does Not Mean You Are Wrong (added 2026-07-24)
On July 24, 2026, Chang'anjie Zhishi (a commentary account affiliated with Beijing Daily) published a complete Q&A from Deng Yu's interview with Peking University's School of Mathematical Sciences. The value of this interview is that it provides a genuine picture of "the daily life of a top mathematician," rather than the brief acceptance remarks one sees on television.
On his beginning at Peking University, Deng Yu recalled an experience that rarely gets attention: he started with Chen Tianquan's course in mathematical analysis, followed Liu Heping in his second year to study harmonic analysis, and did a bit of undergraduate research. "At that time I started to come into contact with some frontier problems in harmonic analysis. I didn't produce any results then, but this training was extremely important." Not a smooth, cheat-code ride to glory, but a normal research path with a phase of "working at it without results."
This passage fills in a common blind spot of the "brain circulation" frame: people tend to see only the moment of the award, and overlook the long stretch in which the laureate did not produce good work. Deng Yu's way of handling that phase is refreshingly honest: travel to reset his mood; if all the problems at hand are stuck, consider new ones; "try to keep myself at all times in a state of 'still having a bit of hope left.'"
Deng Yu said he uses AI to assist his research: for simple conclusions that are essentially certain to be true, he has the AI produce a proof and then checks it. But he emphasized that for students newly entering research, "you must not, just because the AI has produced a seemingly complete argument, skip independent judgment and rigorous verification."
This adds another dimension to the "brain circulation" frame: the circulation of talent is not only the physical flow from school to laboratory — it also includes the iteration of the tools used. A new generation of Chinese mathematicians is already folding AI naturally into the research process, which is not merely a gain in efficiency but a generational shift in research paradigm.
Not Just Two — The Breadth of China's Mathematics Talent Pool
In a Weibo post at 09:08 on July 24, 2026, Hengshui provided a wider lens: although Fields Medal nominations are entirely confidential, in this cycle's internal rumors within the mathematics community and media speculation, several other young Chinese mathematicians besides Wang Hong and Deng Yu were widely tipped.
He mentioned three in particular:
Wang Guozhen and Xu Zhouli — Fudan University's Wang Guozhen (bachelor's and master's at Peking University) is already past the Fields Medal age limit, but his collaborator, UCLA professor Xu Zhouli (also Peking University bachelor's and master's), is still within it. Together with Lin Weinan, the three completely resolved the final case (dimension 126) of the Kervaire invariant problem in 2024–2025, proving the existence of a smooth framed manifold with Kervaire invariant one. This is a major breakthrough in algebraic topology after nearly 60 years.
Zhuang Ziquan — an undergraduate alumnus of Peking University's School of Mathematical Sciences, class of 2010, working in algebraic geometry (birational geometry and K-stability). In recent years he has received the 2023 Sloan Research Fellowship, the 2024 Packard Fellowship, and designation as a Clay Research Scholar, and was invited to give a 45-minute talk at the 2026 ICM. He is one of the most active young Chinese mathematicians in algebraic geometry.
The existence of this cohort validates an extended inference of the "brain circulation" frame: Wang Hong and Deng Yu are not isolated cases but the opening signal that a talent-cultivation system has entered its harvest period. From Wang Guozhen to Xu Zhouli to Zhuang Ziquan, China's "reserve queue" of mathematical talent has taken shape — and something matters more than the breakthrough from zero laureates to some: behind the laureates stands a cohort of contemporaries maintaining comparable competitiveness on the same track.
"See it clearly now? Whether or not they go abroad, every cultivation model for Chinese scientific talent can now find success stories: purely domestic, overseas advanced study, cross-field entrepreneurship, scholar-turned-founder, child prodigy… the post-70s, post-80s and post-90s generations are all blooming and bearing fruit. This shows amply that there is nothing wrong with China's education, and that the era of harvesting the dividend of a talent surge has arrived."
— Baorong Wanwu Hengshui, 2026-07-24 00:27
From Sending Out to Drawing In — Top Global Mathematicians' China Chapter
On July 24, 2026, Hengshui published several consecutive Weibo posts completing a dimension of the "brain circulation" frame that is easy to overlook: China is not only the "source" of mathematical talent — it is also becoming a "destination" for the world's top mathematicians.
The story of Joshua Zahl best illustrates the change in this direction. He was the key collaborator with Wang Hong in cracking the three-dimensional Kakeya conjecture, trained under Terence Tao, and won the Sloan Research Fellowship in April 2026. A young mathematician of this global caliber now works full time at Nankai University's Chern Institute of Mathematics as a chair professor. The fact that he chose China and stays in China is more persuasive than any debate about "brain drain" — because once an academic system can attract the very best people, it is no longer the "sending end."
Look back a little and this is not an isolated personnel arrangement. Caucher Birkar, the 2018 Fields laureate — a British citizen of Iranian Kurdish origin — has worked full time at Tsinghua University since 2021. Efim Zelmanov, the 1994 Fields laureate — an American citizen of Russian origin — joined the Southern University of Science and Technology full time in 2022 as a chair professor and director of the International Center for Mathematics. Two Fields laureates, one from the Middle East and one from Eastern Europe, chose a Chinese university as their long-term base at different points in time.
Put these pieces together and the picture becomes clear: it is not just one or two Chinese talents flowing back — the center of gravity of the global mathematical talent network is shifting toward China. From a country that "sends talent out" to a two-way hub that both sends talent out and draws talent in.
There is one more data point, equally easy to overlook: before Wang Hong and Deng Yu, MIT in the United States had never produced a Fields laureate of its own training. Before 2026, no mathematician whose primary training was an MIT PhD had ever won the Fields Medal. This implies one thing: Wang Hong's and Deng Yu's achievements did not grow naturally out of any single school's education system — they are the product of Chinese basic education as the foundation, the world's top platforms as the boost, and an eventual return to their own cultural home. That is the most standard version of the "brain circulation" chain.
The Laureates' Own Words
In interviews after the ceremony, the responses of Wang Hong and Deng Yu are also worth examining within this frame.
Wang Hong said: "I am very honored to be the third woman to receive the Fields Medal. I hope everyone will muster their courage and bravely do what they love." Her acceptance remarks did not emphasize "national pride" or "serving the motherland," but returned to personal choice and personal courage — which is consistent with the inner logic of the "brain circulation" frame: the precondition for talent circulation is the free development of individual ability, and the results of free development ultimately flow back to the starting point in various forms.
Deng Yu was briefer: "I hope more such things happen in the future." Peking University's official congratulations revealed one detail: during his time at PKU, Deng Yu was nicknamed "Deng the God" by classmates — and Wang Hong and Deng Yu were in fact classmates who entered PKU's School of Mathematical Sciences in the same 2007 cohort. One cohort, two Fields laureates.
Put together, this set of information adds a new dimension to the "brain circulation" frame: the circulation of talent is not only physical flow from school to laboratory — it also includes the "attractive power" of an academic system. When China can attract the world's top mathematicians, the circulation turns from "one-way export" into a "two-way hub."
Dissolving or Reinforcing — The "Return or Not" Narrative Re-examined (added 2026-07-24)
After the Fields Medal news broke, celebration was joined by a wave of skeptical voices. Guancha.cn published an analysis the same day with a blunt title: "Don't use 'whether they return to China' to dissolve the scholars' achievements."
These skeptical voices fall roughly into two types. One: "The two work abroad — can they really count as Chinese mathematicians?" The other: "They probably won't come back — what does it have to do with us?" Both lines of argument point to the same premise: geography determines academic belonging.
Guancha.cn's response offered a logical counterexample: Caucher Birkar (2018 Fields laureate, British citizen of Iranian origin) joined Tsinghua University full time in 2021 and was elected a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2025. Efim Zelmanov (1994 Fields laureate, American citizen of Russian origin) joined the Southern University of Science and Technology full time in 2022. By the skeptics' logic, should these academicians be excluded from the category of "Chinese scientists"? Obviously absurd.
Another laureate of this cycle — American mathematician John Paden — studied Chinese systematically at Princeton, competed in the Chinese Bridge competition under the Chinese name Bai Jiewen, and even took on Shan Tianfang's traditional storytelling. Of this cycle's four laureates, three speak Chinese.
The Structural Harm of Dissolving Questions
The Guancha.cn article made a point that is not easy to refute: "Every time the achievements of overseas-based scholars are steered toward 'when will you return to China,' the implication is a judgment — that staying abroad is a debt, and returning home is the repayment."
The harm of this judgment is twofold. For the individual scholar, it reduces a question of professional achievement to a geographic loyalty test. For the talent system, it sends a signal: there is still a ceiling on how "freedom to come and go" is understood here — and that ceiling is "you'd better come back."
In their own interviews, neither Wang Hong nor Deng Yu let themselves be drawn into this question. Wang Hong's acceptance sentiment was "I hope everyone will muster their courage to do what they love." Deng Yu was briefer: "I hope more such things happen in the future." Both responses bypassed the "return or not" frame and put the focus back on the mathematics itself.
Guancha.cn's analysis pointed to a question deeper than "whether they return to China": the attribution of scientific achievement has never been simply defined by a visa or a workplace. The global circulation of talent is a long-standing norm in the scientific community, and a major force driving the progress of knowledge. China-trained talent contributing abroad and overseas talent contributing in China are not in conflict — they are two sides of the same ecosystem.
People's Daily offered an official-level framing in its commentary that day: "This is a fruit borne of China's devotion to basic education." No emphasis on "returning home" or "belonging" — the achievement was attributed to the education system itself. This phrasing is consistent with the inner logic of the "brain circulation" frame: the value of a system lies not in binding talent but in cultivating talent capable of walking out into the world.
From Chinese Mathematics to China's Mathematics (added 2026-07-25)
In its analysis of July 25, 2026, Chang'anjie Zhishi proposed a distinction that had not previously been adequately discussed: Shing-Tung Yau proved that a person of Chinese heritage can stand at the summit of world mathematics; Wang Hong and Deng Yu proved that China's cultivation system can continuously output talent that reaches the summit of world mathematics.
This distinction fills a subtle but important gap in the "brain circulation" frame. Earlier discussion concentrated on the belonging-anxiety of "return or not" and the structural judgment of "drain versus circulation"; few addressed directly: between "a mathematician of Chinese heritage wins the Fields Medal" and "a Chinese-trained mathematician wins the Fields Medal," what exactly has been added?
Chang'anjie Zhishi's answer: a complete cultivation chain.
Shing-Tung Yau was born in Guangdong in 1949, grew up and studied in Hong Kong, and completed his PhD in the United States — the international mathematics community largely regards his achievement as the individual triumph of a Chinese-heritage mathematical genius. Wang Hong was admitted to Peking University at 16 through the gaokao and transferred into the School of Mathematical Sciences; Deng Yu was recommended for admission to Peking University and began with an IMO gold medal — both of their growth paths traversed the entire chain from Chinese basic education to PKU undergraduate study to the international academic frontier.
That fellow laureate John Paden speaks Chinese has become another signal beyond this chain: today's situation is no longer just Chinese scholars going out — foreign mathematicians are coming in. Twenty years ago Chinese scholars had to learn English to reach the world; today top international scholars proactively learn Chinese and come to China to exchange and collaborate. China's role in the international mathematics network has shifted from "learning along" to "working together."
A Clear Answer to the Qian Xuesen Question — Young-Talent Density from Fields Medals to AI Entrepreneurs (added 2026-07-25)
On the morning of July 25, Chang'anjie Zhishi published an analysis placing the Fields Medals in a larger coordinate system. The article invoked the "Qian Xuesen Question," a classic query familiar to the Chinese public — "Why do our schools always fail to cultivate outstanding talent?" — and then offered its answer: not the breakthrough of any single professor or single discipline, but an entire cultivation system crossing a threshold.
The argument proceeds by listing a roster. Beyond Wang Hong's and Deng Yu's Fields Medals, the article listed several Chinese faces that shook the tech world in the same week — even the same day: Unitree Robotics founder Wang Xingxing appearing on the cover of TIME magazine with the manned mech GD01; Moonshot AI founder Yang Zhilin keeping Silicon Valley talking about the "Kimi K3" breakthrough; DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng's industry commentary repeatedly quoted by international media; plus "the continuously emerging young researchers" in mathematics, physics, life sciences, materials science, aerospace and advanced manufacturing.
The significance of this roster lies not in listing a few names but in displaying a feature of "density" that did not exist before. The speed at which China's young talent reaches the world's scientific frontier can no longer be written off as isolated "accidents" — it is an output curve with systemic support.
The weight of undergraduate education. The article devoted specific attention to the role of China's undergraduate education: "The undergraduate stage determines whether a young person can build a complete knowledge structure, whether they can form the ability to think independently, and whether they can sustain lasting interest in truly hard problems. Young people trained by Chinese universities are increasingly entering the world's most rigorous academic training systems, growing rapidly in mutual exchange with the finest peers of their generation from every country."
This answers the structural half of the "Qian Xuesen Question" — why not before? Because in thirty years of expansion, the foundational capacity of Chinese higher education has only just accumulated to the threshold of being able to output world-class talent. Once that threshold is crossed, it is no longer the isolated case of individual genius but the systematic release of institutional capability.
The reverse of "small yard, high fence." Another layer of the article's argument concerns the environment of international exchange. Both Fields laureates went through the complete chain of "Chinese basic education → PKU undergraduate → overseas PhD/research → international collaboration." The article pointed out that restricting people-to-people exchange, compressing academic exchange and politicizing research collaboration ultimately damages the innovative efficiency of the entire human knowledge system. The recent buzz in America's tech world over "why Yang Zhilin did not choose America" was cited as a telling contrast — as China gains the capacity to participate in global knowledge creation with equality, confidence and openness, America's "small yard, high fence" strategy is accelerating in the opposite direction.
"From the 'Qian Xuesen Question' that once haunted the Chinese people, to today's young scholars standing atop the summit of scientific research one after another, China's answer sheet on cultivating innovative talent is being written out. The world will grow ever more accustomed to seeing young Chinese at the frontier of science, and China will, with an ever more open and inclusive posture, join researchers of every country in expanding the boundaries of human knowledge."
— Chang'anjie Zhishi, via Global Times, 2026-07-25
The Warmth Behind Genius — Wang Hong's Personal Growth and Family Soil (added 2026-07-25)
Later the same day, Chang'anjie Zhishi published an in-depth report on Wang Hong's family background. Its value is that it discusses neither the macro data of cultivation systems nor the abstract significance of academic achievement — it turns the lens onto one concrete person: a small-town girl from Guangxi who was scalded at four and taught herself from a hospital bed. It gives the "brain circulation" frame a human dimension it previously lacked.
An Accident That Changed the Trajectory
When Wang Hong was four, she accidentally scalded her right arm with boiling water, and treatment lasted for years. Her parents were both teachers at the town middle school — her father taught mathematics, her mother English — so as not to hold back her studies, they handed her the textbooks for grades one and two of primary school. Wang Hong could always focus on them deeply, and so she completed first grade from her hospital bed and went directly into second grade. In third grade she underwent another skin graft, again self-studied for a semester from her hospital bed, skipped fourth grade, and moved straight into fifth grade.
What these two grade skips actually mean: Wang Hong skipped grades not because she was a "genius" but because injury forced her to self-study at home, and after learning the material she was found to be able to keep up. It was closer to "forced acceleration" than "deliberate advancement."
The Family's Choices
Around 1998, Wang Hong's father Wang Yingwen was selected to become a secretary at the Pingle County government office, but after the probation period he voluntarily gave up the opportunity — because Wang Hong was still recovering from her burns and needed care. A rural teacher's official career was cut short there, in exchange for the time of a father beside his daughter's hospital bed, reading with her.
Her father said little later in interviews, but one detail is memorable: after Wang Hong was admitted to Peking University, her parents remained composed, and her mother even said, "Getting into PKU doesn't yet count as success." This attitude — refusing to treat exam results as the final judgment, from a pair of rural-teacher parents — stands out sharply in an era saturated with hyper-competitive parenting.
The report contained another detail: Tao Caizhong, director of the external publicity office of Pingle County, said that Pingle is a large agricultural county where most young people leave for migrant work. Wang Hong's Fields Medal has "greatly inspired" local young people — in their eyes, winning a world-class prize was always something for people from big cities. Now a girl from an agricultural county has done it.
Placed within the "brain circulation" frame, Wang Hong's personal story fills more than the detail-gap of "how a genius is cultivated." It says two other things at once: discovering this kind of talent does not require special elite-screening mechanisms — a family of small-town middle-school teachers is enough of a starting point; and the emergence of this kind of talent does not require superhuman narratives of "bitter study" either — the forced self-study after her burns was only plain coping, not an elaborately designed cultivation plan.
Cultural Counterflow — When International Mathematicians Speak Chinese (added 2026-07-25)
The same day, a subplot emerged in the Fields Medal conversation that was overshadowed by the triumphant mainstream narrative — fellow laureate John Paden, an American mathematician, speaks Chinese fluently enough to compete in the Chinese Bridge contest, quotes the Analects deftly, and is a champion of Chinese-language debate.
Beijing Daily's analysis placed this on a longer time scale: "Twenty years ago, Chinese scholars had to learn English to reach the world; today, more and more top international scholars proactively learn Chinese and come to China to exchange and collaborate. China has become a vital node in the global mathematics research network."
This is not merely about "soft-power export" — it is a structural change in the international network of mathematical knowledge. When enough people at the frontier of a field need to exchange in China and collaborate with Chinese researchers, Chinese ceases to be an elective for culture enthusiasts and becomes a practical tool within the field. John Paden's motivation for learning Chinese follows the same logic as Chinese scholars learning English twenty years ago — not a choice of identity, but a choice of efficiency.
Of this cycle's four Fields laureates, three speak Chinese — it is Wang Hong's and Deng Yu's native language, and John Paden speaks it at a fluency achieved through systematic study. The number itself speaks to the depth of China's participation in the global mathematical conversation: not only are Chinese going out — foreigners have learned the local language in order to come in.
Jensen Huang's Silicon Valley Thesis — When the Godfather of AI Endorses China's Talent System (added 2026-07-26)
On July 26, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said in an interview a sentence worth placing on its own into the "brain circulation" puzzle: "A considerable share of the AI talent in Silicon Valley comes from China. China is destined to produce outstanding AI technology."
The weight of this sentence lies not in it being international praise — but in who said it, and in what context. Jensen Huang helms the most important company in the AI industry; NVIDIA's GPUs support the vast majority of the world's AI training workloads. He has met more of the world's top AI talent than most people. A judgment made from his position amounts in itself to an observation report on the global distribution of AI talent.
His phrasing "destined to produce" is grounded. Since 2026, progress in China's AI field — DeepSeek's innovations in model efficiency, the chase of Kimi K3, the mass production of Unitree's humanoid robots — shows leading companies beginning to output world-class results systematically. Jensen Huang's observation merely confirms this trend from outside.
The remark is entirely consistent with the inner logic of the "brain circulation" frame: where talent works is not the endpoint; what matters is where their foundational training and ways of thinking come from. The "Silicon Valley concentration" of Chinese AI talent shows precisely that China's cultivation system is supplying the global AI industry with its most critical factor of production — people.
The Unseen Years — Harvesting Rather than Accompaniment
After the Fields Medal news reached China, another voice mingled with the wave of celebration: when Wang Hong was at Peking University, no one noticed her; after she became famous, everyone has come forward to claim her.
A post-award livestream featured former leaders of PKU's School of Mathematical Sciences and related professors. When the conversation touched Wang Hong and Deng Yu, what recurred was "she took my course," "the field of harmonic analysis is doing well," and "I hope they come back to mentor students." But when the host pressed on what made the three-dimensional Kakeya conjecture hard, and what barriers Wang Hong's proof crossed, the answers quickly grew vague.
The host then asked directly: why did no one notice Wang Hong when she was at Peking University?
The answer was candid — "We never noticed her at all. Her graduation thesis did choose a genuinely hard topic."
On Deng Yu, too, there was a remark worth noting: "Everyone called him Deng the God back then, and we felt at the time: this kind of talent should get out to the international stage as soon as possible and learn from true masters — we shouldn't hold him back."
These two sentences became the most honest part of the entire livestream. One is "not seeing the person"; the other is "seeing them but unable to keep them."
This pattern is not unfamiliar. When the person was here, the achievements were not dazzling enough, the resources not sufficient, no one noticed, and they had to find their own way through a stifling environment. Once they reach France, MIT, Princeton and produce world-class work, everyone suddenly starts flipping through their contacts: she's from our school; he took my course; we always knew he was exceptional.
When a young person has not yet succeeded, the system demands that they constantly prove themselves worthy of resources; when they finally no longer need those resources, the system demands they return to prove the system's success. This can hardly be called cultivation — it is closer to harvesting.
"I hope they come back to mentor students" — why is the first instinct always to have the successful return and prop up the existing system? Why not ask first: are today's students receiving enough guidance? Are those who temporarily have no papers, no grants, no shining transcripts, but who genuinely love mathematics — are they being seen at all?
Wang Hong's experience happens to hold a mirror up to one side of the cultivation system. She initially entered Peking University's School of Earth and Space Sciences and later transferred into the Department of Mathematics. To transfer, she had to juggle her original major's courses and mathematics courses simultaneously, while self-studying some content she could not enroll in directly due to course-selection restrictions. After entering the math department, she was surrounded by competition champions and olympiad gold medalists. She was not the most dazzling student, and throughout her undergraduate years remained in a state of difficult catching-up.
Then she went to France. The École Polytechnique allows students to choose courses freely; she studied architecture and painting, and seriously considered whether to continue with mathematics. In many standardized cultivation systems, such an experience would be judged "insufficiently focused" or "a waste of time." But it was precisely this detour that let her re-confirm what she wanted to do.
Then MIT, where she met her advisor Larry Guth. When her ideas were vague and confused, her advisor did not rush to give the correct answer but listened patiently until she had finished. Wang Hong said: "That was the first time I felt I didn't have to solve every problem alone."
The value of a mentor is not proving themselves smarter than the student but helping the student grow the capacity for independent judgment. This condition rarely arises naturally in systems where everyone is showing off technique and grinding through problem sets.
Exams face certainty — a problem always has an answer, methods largely exist, and the faster you finish the better. Research faces uncertainty — the question may be wrong to begin with, the method may not exist, and years of work may yield nothing. Chinese education is extremely good at training the first kind of ability. The second kind needs entirely different soil: tolerance for hesitation, detours and mistakes, and tolerance for a person without results following their curiosity for a long time.
In some academic systems, students are treated as low-cost project staff — clocking in to complete the advisor's industry contracts, writing materials, running reimbursements, doing receptions and demonstrations. The opposite extreme is complete laissez-faire: if the student grows on their own, the cultivation is credited as effective; if not, the failure is attributed to insufficient ability. One treats students as tools, the other as lottery tickets. Neither essentially treats the student as a person who needs to be seriously cultivated toward gradual independence.
True mentorship is neither clutching the student to complete tasks for oneself nor throwing them into the wilderness and waiting for survivors to return with good news. The environments Wang Hong encountered in France and the United States — someone willing to listen until she finished when her ideas were confused — are a path between the two extremes.
"The day truly worth taking pride in is not when a person becomes famous out in the world and everyone finally recognizes them. It is when they are still a nobody, still struggling, still making mistakes, still unable to prove they will ever succeed — and the system is already willing to see them seriously."
— From "I resent that after the Fields Medal success, a crowd of people scrambled to claim connections"
The Mentor Outside the Window — Applause on the Other Side of the Glass (added 2026-08-03)
On the day of the Fields Medal ceremony, the hall was packed to capacity, and Wang Hong was on stage introducing her work. Outside the hall, someone captured another scene: her advisor Larry Guth, with no seat, carrying an old backpack, standing outside the glass window of the auditorium, bracing himself against the wall, smiling through the window at his student.
Guancha.cn laid bare the composition of that photograph: that pane of glass is like a boundary line — inside are applause, flowers and the spotlight; outside is a mentor with no seat but a face full of pride. This scene closes the loop perfectly with the "not having to solve every problem alone" recorded earlier on this page — the man who patiently listened until she finished when her ideas were vague and confused chose, when she stood on the podium, to stand outside the window.
This detail is a powerful coda to the contrast of "harvesting rather than accompaniment." What was recorded before was the clamor of everyone claiming connections after the fame; Guth's quiet vigil outside the lens belongs to another kind of relationship: his pride does not need to be seen. When the student stands in the spotlight, the people who truly cultivated her are often not in the light — which is itself a metaphor for the cultivation system: good mentorship happens in moments when no one is watching, and it extends to the moment when the honor belongs to the student.
Wang Hong has said Guth helped her build confidence, and that she herself once nearly found mathematics's door closed to her. From nearly being shut out to standing on the podium, between the two stood a mentor willing to listen when her ideas were confused — and to step outside the window when success arrived. Guancha.cn asked from this: can such good teachers be replaced by AI? The answer is hidden in the place "outside the window": AI can give answers, but it will not stand somewhere with no seat, until its feet ache, for another person's achievement.