Talent Strategy Behind China Super Project

Editor’s Note: This article is reproduced by Zhu Xingyu and Entrepreneurial State with authorization.

"Why can’t our school always produce outstanding talents?"

Before he went abroad to study in 1935, Qian Xuesen received a synchronized education in China with the United States. The middle school is studying in the middle school affiliated to Beijing Normal University. President Lin Liru advocates educational reform and inspires students’ interest and consciousness. Students can enter the chemistry laboratory to do experiments at any time, and soak in the library to talk with their classmates about the frontier theory of relativity and Lenin’s revolutionary feat.

When Qian Xuesen graduated from high school, he had already studied science as a sophomore.

Qian Xuesen University studied in Shanghai headquarters of Jiaotong University. Its predecessor was Nanyang College. When it was founded, it was fully benchmarked against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, known as "Oriental MIT". Due to the integration of courses, Qian Xuesen had already studied the postgraduate courses at MIT when he was an undergraduate, and got his master’s degree one year after coming to MIT.

After studying at MIT, Qian Xuesen felt that the undergraduate teaching of Jiaotong University is the world’s advanced level.

In 2005, Qian Lao said with emotion: "None of the students who have been trained for so many years have achieved academic achievements that can be compared with the masters trained during the Republic of China." Qian Lao asked again, "Why can’t our school always cultivate outstanding talents?"

In the Republic of China, where the illiteracy rate is 90%, the industrial base is weak, and politics is chaotic, Chen Shengshen, who started the school of global differential geometry, came out and put forward Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao, whose parity is not conserved. The invention of theorem proving method gave birth to the Wang Hao of theoretical computer science … Why can’t the emerging talents catch up with the masters trained in the Republic of China in the new era?

Qian Xuesen

"If you don’t know what the most advanced ship looks like, how can you build the best ship?"

Shi Yigong, a structural biologist, gave an excited speech at the seminar on talent introduction plan. Just two years after the talent introduction program started in 2008, 326 overseas talents were attracted back to China, including Yao Qizhi, the first Chinese Turing Award winner, and famous biologists Shi Yigong and Rao Yi. However, "there are few first-class talents, but there are many second-and third-rate talents", which has aroused social discussion.

As the representative of the first batch of talents introduced, Shi Yigong firmly supports the talent introduction plan.

"Maybe I was too deeply influenced by the thought of’ born in sorrow and died in happiness’, and I was often worried. I was worried when I reported that China was not as good as abroad. "

Shi Yigong’s worry lies in China’s backwardness in the field of science. "In the high-end research results of life sciences from 2001 to 2006, the gap between Chinese in China and the United States is about 1:10, and Chinese account for about 10%~20% of the United States. On the whole, the high-end research results of life sciences in China are 1%~2% of those in the United States."

Shi Yigong’s conclusion is that "our country is still very backward in many places, so it is necessary to introduce high-end talents". The sustainable development of China in the future must depend on the talents cultivated by itself, but how can you build the best ship if you don’t know what the most advanced ship looks like?

"I’m Chen Lijie, and I want to be a theoretical computer scientist!"

Chen Lijie, a senior student from Yao Ban, Tsinghua, gave a speech on the defense field of the 2016 Tsinghua Undergraduate Special Scholarship, which aroused cheers and prolonged applause from the audience. Chen Lijie, who won the International Informatics Olympiad and was sent to Yao Ban, Tsinghua, has been interested in academics since his freshman year. During his junior year, he became the first China undergraduate to present a paper at the annual meeting of Basic Computer Science.

Chen Lijie said, I feel extremely honored to be born in such a golden age. I dream that I can become a wave in the tide of the golden age and contribute to the wisdom of mankind.

Chen Lijie was born in Yao Ban, Tsinghua, and his immediate seniors include Lou Tiancheng, the famous "building leader", Tang Wenbin, Yinqi and Yang Mu. The former founded Pony.ai, an artificial intelligence travel company, and the latter three are the founders of artificial intelligence unicorn contempt technology. Pony.ai and Defiance Technology, together with the Fourth Paradigm and Etu Technology from ACM class of Shanghai Jiaotong University, occupy half of the world’s artificial intelligence unicorns.

The questions and worries of the first two generations of well-known scientific research talents have gradually been answered in the practice of the new generation of China students. Just like the Jet Lab during the Cold War, Apollo Project and ARPA, the originator of the global Internet, behind the super-projects of these big countries, there are large-scale talent strategies, which bring about technological breakthroughs and then form a golden age of the industry.

Hundreds of millions, all starting from one. Behind the breakthroughs in China’s super projects and national core industries, these leading figures are also closely related to the country’s talent strategy:

Qian Xuesen and "Two Bombs Plan" and "581 Plan";

Shi Yigong and the "Thousand Talents Program";

Chen Lijie, ACM class and Yao Ban’s corresponding "Everest Plan".

A person’s destiny depends on self-struggle, and also takes into account the historical journey.

In 1934, Xueba Qian Xuesen graduated from the Railway Engineering Department of Jiaotong University, and the average score of four years is almost full today. However, he didn’t do well in the exam for public students studying in the United States in August of that year, and he failed in mathematics. Fortunately, he got a high score of 87 points in the course of "Aeronautical Engineering". Professor Ye Qisun of Tsinghua decided to make an exception and Qian Xuesen went to MIT for further study.

After getting his master’s degree in one year, Qian Xuesen joined Professor Von Carmen of California Institute of Technology to study aviation theory, and soon stood out as an authoritative expert in the field of aerodynamics.

Qian Xuesen’s achievements in the United States, in addition to personal efforts, also benefited from the establishment of the "Geng-style study abroad" mechanism, but also benefited from the surging wave of the times in the field of basic scientific research in the United States.

Before 1933, Germany was a well-deserved world science center. At that time, the textbooks of basic science in most countries were German, which was the official language of the world. Even after the defeat of World War I in 1919, German science maintained the highest level in the world, and both relativity and quantum mechanics originated here. In the same period, the United States was in the forefront of the world in applied technology, but its research in basic science was only second-rate.

Before 1933, Germany had 32 Nobel Prize winners, while the United States had only five, and the results were also biased towards the application level.

The change took place in 1933. On April 7th, the Nazis promulgated the Law on Resetting Public Officials, announcing that "communist party, Marxists and people of non-Aryan descent will be dismissed". When a large number of scientists were dismissed, all German universities expressed their collective loyalty to the Nazi government on April 22, and wrote in the Confession: "The sunshine of this nation once again illuminates itself …".

By the beginning of 1938, the number of Jewish scientists expelled had reached 1,800, and the loss of German university teachers reached 39%, among which Einstein, thomas mann, Gustav Hertz and other famous scientists were listed.

With the active operation of American University Aid Committee, Foreign Exile Aid Committee and Rockefeller Foundation, thousands of scientists have been resettled in the United States, and as many as 77% of the 1,400 exiled scientists from Germany and Austria have been accepted by the United States. These exiled scientists brought six Nobel Prize winners, represented by Einstein, and 11 new Nobel Prize winners to the United States. They became the founders of almost all new scientific traditions in the United States and established the outstanding position of the United States in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and other disciplines.

Qian Xuesen’s mentor, von Carmen, was a Jewish scientist who went to the United States under the influence of the Nazis. After he went to the United States, he initiated aerodynamic research at California Institute of Technology. Qian Xuesen came to von Carmen’s company in 1936, and soon stood out as Carmen’s favorite student. He gradually became an assistant from a student, and later became a close collaborator in the field of aerodynamics, and jointly published a "pressure correction formula" called "Qian-Carmen formula" by academic circles.

During the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union also targeted German applied technical talents such as rockets and atomic energy. During the Yalta Conference in February, 1945, Stalin flatly rejected zhukov’s proposal to March into Berlin, demanding to change the route of March, hoping to include the German missile research base Peminende first.

Not to be outdone, the United States sent an investigation team composed of top American missile experts represented by von Carmen and Qian Xuesen to Germany to investigate the development of rocket technology in Germany. With the approval of President Roosevelt, the "Operation Paperclip", which introduced German experts, was put into practice, and the speed of searching and detaining German scientists began to accelerate, and wernher von braun, the core figure of V-2 missile research and development, was secretly established.

In February, 1945, wernher von braun led a design team of 525 people and accumulated important research materials of missile research for 13 years to the American-occupied area, and the US military transported the equipment that could be taken away to the United States, and destroyed the equipment that could not be taken away. On May 27th, when Soviet troops arrived, they were disappointed to find rubbish everywhere. When Stalin learned the news, he was extremely disappointed and furious: "We defeated the Nazis and occupied Berlin and Penemende, but the Americans did take away German rocket experts here. What could be more humiliating and unforgivable?"

At this time, Qian Xuesen received the rank of Colonel of the US Air Force, personally participated in the inquiry of German rocket expert wernher von braun in Germany, inspected the top-secret Goering Institute of Aerodynamics and wind tunnels in other places hidden in the pine forest and wrote a report, and also interrogated ludwig prandtl, the granddaddy of aerodynamics, together with his mentor von Carmen.

After the war, 642 German experts were introduced into the "paper clip" talent input program in the United States. Different from the Jewish intellectual refugees’ focus on basic scientific research, the German rocket scientists’ focus on applied science has effectively supplemented the missing part of their predecessors in the field of scientific research and filled the gap in the United States. Wernher von braun later invented the Saturn series of launch vehicles in the United States and sent 12 men to the moon in the Apollo program.

The United States is an immigrant country, attracting outstanding talents from all over the world through a good political system and culture, but the supply chain of talents in the United States was cut off during World War II. On the one hand, the boom of World War II made the immigration tide that lasted for a hundred years fall to the bottom, which was the least period of immigration in the United States since 1820. On the other hand, the number of American troops has soared 26 times, which has seriously consumed the number of students enrolled in universities.

In view of the "talent deficit" problem, the American government began to speed up talent training:

• Promulgated the Military Rights Act of 1944 to provide university education for veterans, and 4 million veterans have successively completed undergraduate or postgraduate education;

• Establish a scholarship system to attract college students to study science and engineering majors, "equate national security with the training of physicists", and the number of graduates majoring in science and engineering has reached a new high;

• The Eisenhower Administration pushed Congress to promulgate the National Defense Education Act of 1958, which clarified the relationship between national defense and education, established education as the focus of national defense, and a large amount of funds flowed into American colleges and universities, which expanded rapidly.

Benefiting from the influx of German talents and the shortage of talents after the war, the United States established a "dual-track" talent attraction system by adjusting its immigration law in 1952:

• Permanent immigration: the annual quota, the first priority principle is that 50% of the quota is used to attract foreign talents, and the other three principles stipulate that the other 50% is used for the reunion of American citizens and legal aliens with their foreign relatives. Those who apply for the first priority principle must have "higher education, technical training experience, professional experience or special talents, and their services are urgently needed by the United States";

• Non-immigrant visas: A temporary worker (H visa) program will be established, in which H-1 visas will be issued to professionals with outstanding talents, H-2 visas will be issued to skilled and unskilled workers who are in short supply in the United States, and H-3 visas will be issued to foreign workers who receive technical training in the United States.

Attracting foreign talents has become the strategic goal of American immigration policy, and the temporary science and technology labor program marked by H visa is "short, flat and fast", and the government can increase or decrease the number of people according to the economic and political situation, so the H-1B visa that countless engineers are eager for has started.

So far, the United States has formed a training system of education and scientific research based on colleges and universities internally, and established a dual-track talent attraction structure externally. The United States, which has formed a perfect talent system, has made sufficient institutional preparations for the talent war around the outbreak of the Cold War.

In 1949, millions of heroes crossed the river, and the Republic was established on this land that was in great need of development. In 1950, Hua Luogeng returned from the United States and published the famous "Open Letter to Students Studying in the United States" on the eve of passing through the Luohu Port: "Friends, although Liangyuan is good, it is not a land of long residence! In order to choose the truth, we should go back; For the sake of the nation, we should go back, and for the sake of serving the people, we should also go back; Establish our working foundation and strive for the construction and development of our great motherland! "

This letter touched Qian Xuesen, who worked in the United States for 15 years. As early as 1939, after completing his doctoral studies, he wanted to return to China. He was persuaded by his tutor von Carmen and stayed in the United States for 11 years. During these 11 years, he became an authority in the rocket field, an expert in the scientific advisory group of the US Department of Defense, received the title of Colonel of the US Army and was free to enter and leave the Pentagon.

As we all know, Qian Xuesen was detained by the Immigration Bureau on the eve of preparing to return to China, and then began to live under house arrest in the United States for five years. In the same period, the US government will lose the government funds of the Republic of China to support the forced immigration of 3,400 China students stranded in the United States, and attract more than 20,000 intellectuals of the Republic of China, including Zhang Ailing, to immigrate to the United States by supporting public welfare organizations and non-governmental organizations to operate in Hong Kong and Macao.

On February 26th, 1955, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army liberated all the coastal islands in Zhejiang, and the US Congress passed the US-Taiwan Joint Defense Treaty urgently, stating that they had the right to use atomic bombs when the Taiwan Province Strait was threatened. On March 16, US President Eisenhower declared in a televised speech that "nuclear weapons are not only strategic weapons, but also can be used for tactical purposes." , to carry out naked nuclear blackmail on China with non-nuclear capability at that time.

Chairman Mao asked Premier Zhou: "What are our talents in the development of atomic bombs and missiles?"

Premier Zhou replied: "We have the talent advantage in this field. Qian Sanqiang worked with Nobel Prize winner Madame Curie … Professor Qian Xuesen, a missile expert who worked under Dr. Von Carmen, the’ father of rockets’ in the United States, is trying to get him to return to China as soon as possible through various channels …"

On October 8, 1955, Qian Xuesen arrived at Luohu Bridge in Shenzhen, together with nuclear physicists Li Zhengwu and Professor Sun Xiang. Prior to this, 1,424 Chinese who studied and worked overseas returned to China, and they became the backbone of the construction of this ancient and young country. Among the first 172 academicians of China Academy of Sciences in 1955, 158 were returned talents, which played an important role in the construction of industrial system and basic scientific research system in China.

Since then, Qian Xuesen has devoted himself to the research and development of the "two bombs" in China. The connotation of the two bombs has also changed from the initial missile and atomic bomb to the later atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb. In October 1957, after the Soviet Union launched its first satellite, Qian Xuesen led the "581 Project" and "651 Project" of China Satellite successively.

On October 16th, 1964, at 3pm sharp, China’s first atomic bomb exploded successfully, and nuclear blackmail became a term in history.

From 1966 to 1977, the talent system in China collapsed, and the college entrance examination was stagnant for 10 years. In 1977, the chief designer who had just returned presided over a discussion and made a decision to resume the college entrance examination that year. 5.7 million candidates entered the college entrance examination room, and the fate of 270,000 people changed from then on.

With the strong support of the chief designer who had studied in France, the system of studying abroad began to recover. In 1978, the first batch of 52 overseas students were sent abroad at public expense. In 1981, the door to studying abroad at their own expense was officially opened, and the first TOEFL test was held in the mainland. The policy of "supporting studying abroad, encouraging returning home and coming and going freely" was set, and the number of students studying at their own expense exceeded 100,000 in the second year. The chief designer pointed out: "there should be thousands of factions, not just ten or eight."

After a long period of mental depression, young people are greedy for the outside air.

In 1986, Tsinghua’s Zhang Chaoyang won the Li Zhengdao Scholarship, and stood out from 700 top students, becoming one of 100 lucky ones. In the same year, Yan Yan, Xiong Xiaoge and Zhang Yaqin went to the United States. In 1987, Xu Xiaoping first went to the United States and then went to Canada to wash dishes for a long time.

In 1993, Peking Man in new york was popular all over the country: "If you love him, send him to new york, because it is heaven;" If you hate him, send him to new york, because it is hell. "

The huge environmental gap makes few people want to come back. In the 30 years since international students opened the floodgates, only a quarter of them have returned to China. Shi Yigong once mentioned in his speech: Of the 2,251 undergraduates in Tsinghua, 16,700 went to the United States after graduation. Most of them are still in the United States now, but few of them stand out, and contentment is a very big problem.

Shi Yigong’s Ph.D. study in the United States was very painful, and he often failed. However, after the postdoctoral research began, Shi Yigong found that his interest in biology gradually grew, and he quickly made achievements in X-ray crystallography to dissect protein structures. In 1998, Shi Yigong became an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Biology of Princeton University, and soon became the youngest full-time professor since the establishment of the Department.

Like many people, Shi Yigong originally imagined that the United States was a beautiful, free and democratic country, but in real life, he began to realize the gap between imagination and reality. In 1995, Shi Yigong, who graduated with a doctor’s degree, had the idea of returning to China, but the problem was that there was no matching research environment in China, and he might only be an English teacher, a tour guide or even a taxi driver.

In the United States during the Cold War, national defense was deeply bound up with education and scientific research. Of the huge annual defense funds, more than 11% directly flowed into scientific research in related fields, and 30% of the equipment procurement expenses flowed into Boeing in Seattle, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Lockheed in Silicon Valley. The spillover of military demand created two science and technology industrial centers, which brought CPU, computer and the subsequent Internet era to the United States.

In the same period of China, economic construction became the absolute center. At the meeting, the chief designer asked the troops to "be patient for a few years", that is, to cut down a lot to save military expenses and support national construction. In order to introduce technology and construction funds and technology, the market-for-technology initiative was implemented, which promoted market growth and brought about the stagnation of localization.

The country’s scientific and technological foundation is indeed very weak. In the 10 years since 1992, the first prize of the National Natural Science Award and the National Technological Invention Award, which were selected every year, fell into an embarrassing situation. The former was only awarded twice in the 10 years, and the academicians Feng Kang and Qin Renchang who won the prize both passed away. The latter was sent three times in 10 years. The founding fathers of "two bombs and one satellite" have all won the honor, but no one can keep up with it. When the self-developed ARJ21 aircraft project was launched in 2002, the designers were either old people in their fifties and sixties, and the rest were young people in their twenties. One generation disappeared.

In China during this period, the scale of high-level scientific research talents was insufficient and the age was unbalanced. In 1992, the average age of research institutes of Chinese Academy of Sciences was 53 years old, and the proportion of university professors over 56 years old in China reached an astonishing 80%, which needed fresh blood urgently. The Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Personnel and Education have successively led the "National Jieqing Fund", the "100 Million Project" and the "Changjiang Scholars" program. However, due to the lack of basic environment, the mobilization efforts and achievements are very limited. "There are less than 10 candidates for Changjiang scholars to meet the threshold, which is very obvious compared with hundreds of overseas universities."

After China joined the WTO at the end of 2001, the problem of brain drain in China became more prominent. Since 2000, the number of Chinese students returning to China has gradually declined. By 2004, only 20.9% of them chose to return to China. New Oriental, an English training institution for studying abroad, has become a sacred place in everyone’s heart, and Yu Minhong has been compared to "Moses" in the new era.

What we lose is what we gain. We have exchanged the demographic dividend and the market for the soaring economy, and the GDP has maintained an average annual growth of nearly 10% in the past 20 years. In 1990, China’s economic volume accounted for 1.82% of the world’s total, which increased to 3.69% in 2000, and in 2010, China’s share reached 9.36%. Today, the proportion is 16%, and that of the United States is 24%.

In October 1999, as an outstanding young Chinese expert in the United States, Li Yanhong was invited to return to China to attend the National Day ceremony of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. He was deeply impressed by the advertisements on the websites in the streets. At this time, the pattern of foreign technology dominating the world made him feel the opportunity to start a business. On January 1, 2000, Baidu began to work in Peking University Resource Hotel.

"Historical upheaval is taking place in the motherland". In 2007, Rao Yi, who had been a tenured professor at Northwest University, returned to China. After being applied as the president of Peking University Academy of Life Sciences, he decided that "instead of criticizing overseas, he might as well go back to China to practice".

Encouraged by Rao Yi, Shi Yigong also resigned as a tenured professor at Princeton and returned to teach in the Department of Biology in Tsinghua University: "I hope to come back when I am in my prime and work for the health of the motherland for at least 30 years."

After China’s entry into WTO, the severe talent situation in China has attracted the attention of policy makers. In the Outline of the National Talent Team Construction Plan for 2002-2005, the strategy of "strengthening the country through talents" was put forward for the first time. Later, as one of the basic strategies, strengthening the country through talents was written into party constitution and the report of the 17th National Congress. The rapidly growing economy has become a solid backing and guarantee for the strategic landing.

China’s talent strategy has entered the fast lane of top-level design.

In December 2008, the implementation plan of "Thousand Talents Plan" was issued under the planning of the coordination group for talent work. This is the first talent program coordinated by the central government and implemented by dozens of ministries and commissions, aiming to attract scientific experts who are at the forefront of international research, master core key technologies or have patents.

In 2008, Shi Yigong, Rao Yi and 122 experts, including Turing Prize winner Yao Qizhi who returned to China earlier, were selected into the first batch of talent introduction plans. Up to now, the talent introduction plan has introduced more than 7,000 high-level talents in 13 batches. The leader of the Central Group said: "If there are 1,000 truly useful leading talents among these 10,000 people, it will be great."

The new generation of leaders ensured the continuity of the talent project policy. In his speech at the celebration meeting of the centenary of the founding of the European and American Alumni Association, the General Secretary clearly stated that he would vigorously promote the talent plan and called on "overseas students to integrate their dreams into the Chinese dream", and the central policy of studying abroad, which lasted for decades, was extended and expanded, adding "playing a role".

The "Thousand Talents Program" and the "Young Thousand Talents Program" emerged the basic research achievements such as quantum communication and protein three-dimensional structure, and the application breakthroughs such as OLED screen, Alibaba Cloud, commercial aircraft and algorithm recommendation also began to affect our lives. Breakthroughs in chip packaging, manufacturing and design became the prerequisite for the strategy of manufacturing a powerful country later.

As benchmarking figures, Shi Yigong and Rao Yi have also begun to explore and make efforts for the reform of China’s science and technology system and the frontier research of science and technology.

In 2011, Shi Yigong and Rao Yi, the deans of Tsinghua University and Peking University College of Life Sciences respectively, took the lead in setting up the Tsinghua-Peking University Joint Center for Life Sciences with the support of the Ministry of Education, which became a pioneer pilot in the reform of scientific research and education system: introducing the internationally accepted Tenuer Track system, and "leaving after six years of employment"; Reform the personnel system, separate practice from administration, and professors will enjoy higher autonomy in teaching and scientific research.

The emergence of Life Joint Center has made Tsinghua Peking University’s scientific research ability in the field of life sciences become well-known in China, and world-class young scientists such as Yan Ning, Chai Jijie, Wu Jiawei, Wang Hongwei and Yang Maojun have emerged one after another. Before 2009, only one article was published in the two top journals of Science and Nature in Tsinghua, and more than 70 articles were published in the following eight or nine years.

In 2018, Shi Yigong resigned as the vice-president of Tsinghua University and devoted himself to the establishment of the research university West Lake University. West Lake University is Shi Yigong’s solution to "Qian Xuesen’s question": small but precise, with a high starting point and a priority subject. At the beginning of its establishment, it focused on cultivating doctoral students and top-notch innovative talents, with the goal of benchmarking the well-known research university California Institute of Technology fifteen years later. Among the founding donors, there are Ma Huateng, Wang Jianlin and others.

On the historical tide of going out and returning, people who grasp the trend most accurately have begun to create the future trend.

"Why can’t we win the championship? "

In 2000, at the International ACM Programming Finals held in Orlando, USA, Lin Chenxi of Shanghai Jiaotong University watched three players from St. Petersburg State University win the championship trophy. This is the fifth year that Shanghai Jiaotong University participated in the international ACM competition, and Lin Chenxi led the team to achieve the best result in history: the seventh place in the world.

Lin Chenxi, who won a bronze medal, was not reconciled.

ACM International Programming Competition for College Students has been held since 1970, and it is called "Olympics in Computer Field". ACM competition takes the school as the unit, and three people work together to solve dozens of complex programming problems in five hours, which not only examines students’ programming ability, creativity and teamwork ability, but also serves as a window for world-class universities to show their educational achievements.

Unwilling to think about it, Lin Chenxi, a junior, decided to apply to coach Yu Yong to repeat the grade and transfer to the computer department: "It’s not that we can’t do it, but that we dare not think about it." In order to win, Lin Chenxi maintained the training rhythm from 9 am to 2 am every day for the next two years, excavated potential Lu Jing and Zhou Jian from the newcomers, and formed a world-class team. They refused to sparring and only fought with themselves. "The team that wants to win the championship has no sparring."

In March, 2002, Lin Chenxi led a team to win the ACM Finals, becoming the first Asian team to win the championship. They won the highest prize. When the returning plane landed, Xie Shengwu, president of Jiaotong University, personally greeted them at the airport with flowers. Lin Chenxi recalled that he was "frightened at that time".

Professor Yu Yong, who led the team, knew that it was time to establish a mechanism to train computer scientists and industry leaders. "The other abilities of this competition assessment are not available in the classroom. It seems that we only teach hard things, but we can’t compete with others. No one emphasizes the soft skills of communication, expression and cooperation. "

On April 26, Jiaotong University won the championship. On June 16, Professor Yu Yong submitted an application to the school to set up a computer experimental class. Two days later, he received an approval. In September, ACM class of Jiaotong University began to enroll students.

In the same year, another key meeting took place in Beijing. The only Chinese professor Yao Qizhi who won the Turing Award, known as the Nobel Prize in Computer Science, visited Tsinghua. At the strong invitation of Professor Yang Zhenning, Professor Yao Qizhi resigned as a tenured faculty member of Princeton University in 2004 and came to teach in Tsinghua University.

After Yao Qizhi came to Tsinghua, he wanted to recruit several graduate students, but after the best students were recruited, they found that "the foundation is not enough, and a lot of knowledge that should be known is unknown". From students to research, it takes a long time to change their thinking and mentality. Yao Qizhi thought that we must start with undergraduates and train first-class undergraduates, so as to train first-class doctoral students and first-class researchers.

In 2005, the computer science experimental class was established. This undergraduate class, called "Yao Ban", was personally developed by Yao Qizhi and the teaching plan was written. Yao Qizhi lectures on the course "Theoretical Computer Science", which takes undergraduates for four hours every week.

ACM class and Yao Ban are very similar in training methods:

• Strengthen the guidance for students to engage in computer research in the direction;

• In terms of teachers, we should break through the school barriers and introduce a large proportion of visiting professors to teach, and try our best to find whoever speaks well;

• Freshmen and sophomores place special emphasis on basic courses, such as mathematical analysis and linear algebra;

• After junior year, he entered the laboratory very early and engaged in scientific research;

• Attach importance to bilingual education, and all courses in Yao Ban are taught in English;

• Attaching importance to internship and communication, junior students of the first ACM class collectively went to Microsoft Research Institute for internship, and half of the students in Yao Ban had the opportunity to exchange abroad.

With the implementation of talent programs such as Thousand Talents Program and Youth Thousand Talents Program, outstanding young talents begin to return, and outstanding undergraduates can have access to top research and have top knowledge.

Dai Wenyuan, Lou Tiancheng, Tang Wenbin, Yinqi, Yang Mu … The founders of these enterprises, who occupy half of the world’s AI unicorns, are all from ACM class and Yao Ban, while Rong Rong, Chen Danqi, Zhao Shuang, Kelly Y Zhou, Bei Xiaohui and others have also begun to make breakthroughs and achievements in the frontier research field of computers, expanding the boundary of human cognition to the unknown mystery.

In 2009, ministries and commissions such as education, China Central Committee, and finance organized and implemented the "Experimental Plan for Training Top Students in Basic Subjects", also known as the "Everest Plan", aiming at attracting the best students to join in basic scientific research and exploring various modes to train famous talents. Class ACM and Yao Ban became pioneers and models of "Everest Plan", which pointed out the way for later changes.

The Landing of "Everest Plan" in Colleges and Universities (Part)

In 2009, Tsinghua University launched the "Tsinghua School Talent Training Plan" and established six Tsinghua school classes, namely, Tsinghua School Mathematics Class, Physics Class, Chemistry Class, Life Science Class, Computer Science Experiment Class and Qian Xuesen Mechanics Class. Second enrollment, independent training, and well-known resources, life science class led by Shi Yigong and "Yao Ban" led by Yao Qizhi were included. As a special teaching place, Tsinghua School, the oldest building in Tsinghua, can be selected as a favored child bearing the glory of history.

In 2010, Zhiyuan College of Shanghai Jiaotong University was officially listed, and ACM class was included in the computer science direction of Zhiyuan College. Zhiyuan College has become the top-notch innovative talent training base and "experimental special zone" of Jiaotong University, providing the best university education for outstanding talents and training well-known students with the strength of the whole school. "Zhiyuan honor plan" has become the goal of Jiaotong University students.

In 2010, the Qiushi Science Class of Zhejiang University was established and incorporated into Zhu Kezhen College. The overall adjustment of the college was to be a science class, a mixed class and an experimental class of humanities and social sciences. Zhu Kezhen College has become an honorary college of Zhejiang University to implement "special training" for outstanding undergraduate students.

In 2011, the "Everest Plan" was included in the sub-plan of the National Youth Talents Development Plan, and was included in the scope of the talent work coordination group together with the "Ten Thousand Talents Plan" and the earlier "Thousand Talents Plan", which became an important part of the national talent strategy.

Talent plan led by the central coordination group for talent work

The industrial foundation laid by Qian Xuesen, the practical spirit of Shi Yigong, and the top-level design of the national strategy have gathered together at this moment, paving the way for the sea of stars in Chen Lijie.

Kai-fu Lee once recalled that when he founded Microsoft Research Asia in 1998, he hired the first batch of fresh graduates as researchers. "No one passed the test.". In 2011, JohnHopcroft, winner of Turing Prize, once commented on Yao Ban: "Yao Ban has the best undergraduate students and the best undergraduate education in the world." For this evaluation, Yao Qizhi confidently believes that it is well deserved.

Young people from ACM class and Yao Ban, and from "Everest Plan", stood at a new height and began to break through in the technical field.

Lin Chenxi, who completed her dream of winning the championship, became the teaching assistant of the first ACM class, and trained the next generation of champions in the ACM class. After graduation, she went to work in Microsoft Asia Research Institute and worked under Wang Jian, then the executive vice president. In 2008, they moved to Alibaba together, struggled in the arduous battle of cloud computing for four years, and completed Feitian’s large-scale cloud computing operating system.

Lin Chenxi, who "feels like a lifetime", founded Etu Technology with his high school classmate Leo Zhu in 12 years and started his business in the field of artificial intelligence. During the G20 period, the Ningbo Municipal Government arranged 10 cameras equipped with map-based capabilities in subway stations at key sections, and arrested 9 fugitives in three weeks.

Dai Wenyuan, who became a member of the first ACM class, inherited from Lin Chenxi, a senior, and won the second international ACM championship trophy in his junior year. Because I went out to participate in the competition, when I chose the research direction in my junior year, only the artificial intelligence direction that was "not hot at all" was left to choose. At that time, when artificial intelligence was unpopular, the tutor Professor Yang Qiang and Dai Wenyuan insisted on this direction.

In 2008, Dai Wenyuan realized the powerful contribution of data to artificial intelligence. In 2009, he gave up the opportunity to study PhD and joined Baidu. Together with Chen Yuqiang, who was an intern at that time, he built a commercial deep learning system-Baidu’s "Fengchao" advertising system. As a result, Baidu’s liquidity was improved by 800%, and Dai Wenyuan was promoted to be the youngest T10 scientist in Baidu. In 2015, Dai Wenyuan and Chen Yuqiang founded the fourth paradigm, hoping to make AI for Everyone in the stage of AI industrialization.

Lou Tiancheng, two grades younger than Dai Wenyuan, entered the first Yao Ban. During his school days, he toured all major competitions and lists at home and abroad, and was honored as the "building leader": the gold medal in the International Informatics Olympic Competition, the champion of the two-time Baidu Star Competition, the first TopCoder in China, the ACM international gold medal, and the champion of the Google Programming Challenge … He joined Google after graduating from Ph.D. in 2012, and later joined the Baidu unmanned vehicle team in Andrew Ng after a short stay in Quaro. At that time, Andrew Ng praised him on FB. In 2016, Lou Tiancheng, as a co-founder, founded Pony.ai, an artificial intelligence company, and helped a group of younger brothers and sisters in Yao Ban to cultivate unmanned driving.

Chen Shixi of Fudan, Lou Tiancheng’s old rival in the programming competition, is an anime fan, and later joined Baidu, where there is a saying that "the south is light and the north is natural". Chen Shixi left a set of machine learning infrastructure mio in Baidu, named after Qiu Shanling, the heroine of the famous cute cartoon "Girl with a Light Voice". mio later became the prototype recommended by companies such as Aauto Quicker, Didi and Meituan. In 17 years, Chen Shixi joined the driverless company Jingchi Automobile, and the same building leader continued to "compete between the North and the South" in driverless driving.

Yao Ban, who won the international ACM gold medal with Lou Tiancheng, devoted himself to academic research, and won the Sloan Prize for "Nobel Prize Vane" based on his research on nonconvex optimization in deep learning for 19 years. His achievements have an important influence on the theoretical research of artificial intelligence. Lou Tiancheng and Rong Rong’s third teammate, Hu Weidong, chose to work as an informatics teacher in the experimental middle school affiliated to Beijing Normal University after graduation, engaged in high school programming teaching, brought out the gold medal in the International Informatics Olympic Competition, brought out dozens of students who walked in Tsinghua, and became the "world gold medal coach" in informatics education, personally practicing the popularization of programming education in middle schools.

Tang Wenbin, the next younger brother of Lou Tiancheng, won the silver medal in the ACM International Competition. When he was in graduate school, his tutor went overseas for half a year and sent him to Microsoft Asia Research Institute for an internship. However, Yinqi, an undergraduate classmate, was making images in the next group of Asia Research Institute. The more they talked, the more they felt that images were the future direction. Robots must need a pair of eyes. In 2012, two people joined Yang Mu, a younger brother who is good at data mining, and founded Defiance Technology to "be the best face recognition cloud platform".

Tang Wenbin and Inch’s classmates Long Fan and Dr. MIT went to the University of Toronto, one of the holy places of artificial intelligence, to teach and study cryptography after graduation. At the end of 2017, at the invitation of Professor Yao Qizhi, he returned to Yao Ban to take a 3-hour cryptography course. In the class, Yao Ban, the classroom teaching assistant and Long Fan had a heated discussion on the expansion problems faced by the current blockchain. In mid-May 2018, this group published the results as a paper "Expanding the Satoshi Nakamoto Consensus to thousands of transactions per second" to explore how to solve the bottleneck of low throughput of public chains. Investment institutions blasted their contact information, and Long Fan and four companions expanded their thesis into the blockchain project Conflux. Four of these five people were born in Yao Ban.

China’s artificial intelligence startups have grown rapidly in the past three years, and six unicorns have appeared, with a total valuation of more than $12 billion. China recommended algorithms, autonomous driving and machine vision, and talents from ACM class and Yao Ban dominated the development of these tracks. What is worth pondering is that Yao Ban and the students in ACM’s class who went abroad to work in Google, Facebook and other overseas places were promoted quickly at the initial stage with their talent and accumulation, but they encountered "glass ceilings" one after another, and it was difficult to re-enter after being promoted to T6 level.

Our predecessors planted trees, while our descendants enjoyed the cool. Because of the excellent example of the predecessors, the subsequent students enjoy more and more resources and board a broader stage, and the top-level student exchange will produce a steady stream of students with top vision.

As Yao Ban Chen Lijie said: I feel extremely honored to be born in such a golden age. I dream that I can become a wave in the spring tide of the golden age and contribute to the wisdom of mankind. On the giant’s shoulder, he can make a declaration calmly:

"I’m Chen Lijie, and I want to be a theoretical computer scientist!"

[1]. Biography of Qian Xuesen, Ye Yonglie

[2]. The intercontinental transfer of Nazi German scientists in exile, Li Gongzhen.

[3]. Competition between the Soviet Union and the United States in outer space during the Cold War (1945-1969), Fan Haihong

[4]. The Cold War and the formation of the American talent attraction mechanism (1945-1960), Liang Maoxin

[5]. Summary report on the pilot program of training top-notch students in basic disciplines (2009-2013)

[6]. China overseas high-level scientific and technological talent policy research, Du Hongliang Zhao Zhiyun.

[7]. The necessity and urgency of the Thousand Talents Program, Shi Yigong

[8]. Top-notch innovative talents training new ideas, Yao Qizhi

[9]. ai Future, Kai-Fu Lee

[10]. Ten years ago, the genius boy, today’s AI golden generation, the daily figure Luo Ting.

[11]. Chen Lijie: I want to be a theoretical computer scientist, Chen Lijie

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