MIT ranked No. 1 for best graduate engineering program in the 2026 rankings, leading the country and excelling in six engineering specialties, including computer and electrical engineering.
In recent weeks, China approved the world's first commercial brain-computer interface medical device and unveiled a five-ton class electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that has already completed a public flight.
Premier Li Qiang emphasized 'the need to accelerate self-reliance in high-level science and technology' against a background of 'unilateralism and protectionism escalating abruptly,' referencing Trump administration trade policy, while highlighting China's recent advances in independent chip research and development and noting integrated circuit output rose 10.9 percent last year.
China's approach to AI is architecturally different. Where Western tech companies have largely pursued AI as a product category - chatbots, copilots, and standalone tools that can be sold to enterprises - China has treated AI as infrastructure: a utility layer woven into the fabric of commerce, logistics, government services, and daily life.
When Keir Starmer met Xi Jinping recently, reporters said the British prime minister was shocked at his Chinese counterpart calling Crystal Palace Palace, liking Manchester City and Arsenal and supporting Manchester United. The reasons can be guessed. Fan Zhiyi was popular at Selhurst Park in the late 1990s, Sun Jihai was a cult hero at Maine Road and Manchester United had Dong Fangzhuo. The president of the world's second most populous country and second biggest economy didn't, however, mention Everton.
The world today is witnessing the dawn of an AI-driven intelligent revolution, Eddie Wu told a developer conference in September. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) will not only amplify human intelligence but also unlock human potential, paving the way for the arrival of artificial superintelligence (ASI). ASI, Wu said, could produce a generation of super scientists' and full-stack super engineers', who would tackle unsolved scientific and engineering problems at unimaginable speeds.
Tianfu Cup was launched as an alternative to the Zero Day Initiative's Pwn2Own competition, which regularly pays out more than $1 million to white hat hackers who demonstrate critical vulnerabilities in consumer and enterprise hardware and software, industrial control systems, and automotive products. Tianfu Cup made headlines in 2021, when participants earned a total of $1.9 million for exploits targeting Windows, Ubuntu, iOS, Microsoft Exchange, Chrome, Safari, Adobe Reader, Asus routers, and various virtualization products.
Known as ExStra, this is a permanent national funding programme designed to strengthen research at the nation's top universities and make them more competitive internationally. While the ExStra programme allows for up to 15 "Excellent Universities" (Exzellenzuniversitaten), only ten institutions have made the grade for the next round of funding.
A decade ago, China's political leaders laid out an ambitious industrial plan: By 2025, they pledged, their country would be a world capital, with the goal of moving from "Chinese speed to Chinese quality, the transformation of Chinese products to Chinese brands." This is the difference, they wrote, between "Made in China" and "Created in China." At WIRED, we never take what the government (ours or anybody else's) says at face value.
In case you didn't get the memo, everyone is feeling very Chinese these days. Across social media, people are proclaiming that "You met me at a very Chinese time of my life," while performing stereotypically Chinese-coded activities like eating dim sum or wearing the viral Adidas Chinese jacket. The trend blew up so much in recent weeks that celebrities like comedian Jimmy O Yang and influencer Hasan Piker even got in on it. It has now evolved into variations like " Chinamaxxing" (acting increasingly more Chinese) and " u will turn Chinese tomorrow " (a kind of affirmation or blessing).
In a letter addressed to Purdue leadership, which was publicized Friday and shared exclusively with the Guardian, dozens of signatories argue that the university soft banning students based on their nationality erodes higher education's core values of meritocracy, equality and academic freedom. They called on Purdue to clarify any instructions it has given graduate admissions committees and to restore offers to scores of international students they say the university rescinded last year.
As reported by the Harvard Crimson student newspaper, reflecting on the present challenges to institutions around accusations of intolerance and hostility to free debate, Garber came down firmly on the side of not debating (bold is mine): "I'm pleased to say that I think there is real movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you need to be objective in the classroom."
"If a rover comes across a crater in front of it, for instance, it can't decide what to do after communicating with Earth," he says, because sending signals across space takes too long. "It must decide on its own. So I think AI is very important for the nation's deep space exploration."
While not a full picture of OpenAI's workforce, the snapshot underscores how heavily frontier AI labs continue to draw from a small cluster of top research universities - and how concentrated elite AI talent remains.
Instead of paralyzing China's AI sector, these controls have promoted domestic self-reliance. With no choice but to develop indigenous workarounds and architectural innovations, Chinese businesses are decoupling AI progress from sheer hardware volume. U.S. policies have undoubtedly bought time, but they have also ushered in a parallel innovation ecosystem totally independent of Western influence.
