How Chinese graduates fuel US dominance in AI

By Phong Ngo February 21, 2025 | 02:17 am PT

Graduates from Chinese universities are playing a predominant role in sustaining the U.S.'s dominance in artificial intelligence, despite the country’s rising competition with China, a study has found.

The study by the Paulson Institute’s think tank MacroPolo found that nearly 40% of top AI researchers at U.S. companies and institutions earned their undergraduate degrees from Chinese universities, even more than from American institutions.

To assess U.S. dominance in AI, MacroPolo analyzed authors of papers presented at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems in 2019 and 2022. In 2022 seven of the top 10 entities affiliated with these researchers were based in the U.S., including Google and Stanford University. China closely followed, with Tsinghua University and Peking University ranking among the top 10 contributors.

The ratio of leading AI experts in the U.S. with Chinese undergraduate degrees grew from 27% in 2019 to 38% in 2022, higher than the 37% who graduated from U.S. universities.

Peking University students at their graduation ceremony, July 2023. Photo courtesy of Peking University

"It is clear that a certain number of talented young researchers from China are contributing to the advancement of AI research at companies and institutions in the U.S.," Masashi Sugiyama, director of the Center for Advanced Intelligence Project at Riken, a government-backed Japanese research institute, said.

The U.S. is expected to maintain its AI leadership as it continues to attract Chinese talent, Nikkei Asia newspaper said quoting analysts. A 2022 MacroPolo study found that 80% of foreign recipients of doctoral degrees in the U.S. stayed back to work there.