[News Terms] China’s Talent Development Project ‘Tianren Plan’

Selection of Overseas Chinese Innovation and Startup Talents
Accelerating 'AI Rise' Toward AI Superpower by 2030
US Launches Hunt for Chinese Industrial Spies

Jane Wu (61), a Chinese-American professor at Northwestern University Medical School who participated in China’s “Thousand Talents Plan,” took her own life at her home in Chicago on the 10th of last month. Chinese state media expressed outrage, calling it a “witch hunt” against Chinese scientists. Despite Professor Wu’s numerous achievements in the field of neuroscience, the university closed her laboratory and even deleted her personal information page, they pointed out.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping
[Photo by Yonhap News]

The “Thousand Talents Plan (千人計劃)” is an overseas talent recruitment program led by the Chinese Communist Party. It is a plan to attract 1,000 talents in science and technology to China over a decade from 2009 to 2018. Talents are broadly selected into two categories: “innovative talents” and “entrepreneurial talents.” The selection criteria include being under 55 years old, holding a Ph.D. from a prestigious overseas university, and working in China for more than six months annually. Recruited talents receive various incentives such as a subsidy of 1 million yuan (approximately 200 million KRW) per person, research activity funds, and visa privileges. In return, they must share their research results with the Chinese government.

The Thousand Talents Plan gathered Chinese scholars from overseas, including the United States. Among them, Dr. Zhang Tong, a Stanford University Ph.D. graduate and a leading authority in AI with 60 related patents, was recruited by Tencent, a major Chinese information technology (IT) company, but resigned a few years ago. Professor Pan Jianwei of the University of Science and Technology of China also returned to China through the Thousand Talents Plan. He was named “Person of the Year” in 2017 by Nature for his work in quantum cryptography communication technology.

Based on the advanced technologies and knowledge shared by recruited talents, China has successfully developed key industries such as semiconductors, robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI). China is accelerating its “AI Rise” to become the world’s number one AI power by 2030. According to the “Trends and Implications of China’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Industry” report published by the Korea International Trade Association’s Institute for International Trade and Commerce, China’s AI industry size was 150 billion yuan (25.789 trillion KRW) in 2020, growing at an average annual rate of 26.8%, and is expected to reach 450 billion yuan (77.364 trillion KRW) by 2025. In 2020, 20.7% of all AI papers cited worldwide were published in China. China surpassed the United States for the first time in the number of citations, ranking first.

[Photo by AI Image]

Jeon Bohee, a senior researcher at the Korea International Trade Association, evaluated, “The remarkable growth of China’s AI industry is the result of China’s long-term vision and systematic preparation through policy efforts such as the Thousand Talents Plan, Made in China 2025 (2015), the Next Generation AI Development Plan (2017), and the Ten Thousand Talents Plan (2019).”

Professor Jane Wu, who previously took the extreme step, operated a laboratory and taught students at the Institute of Biophysics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing according to the Thousand Talents Plan. After participating in the Thousand Talents Plan, Professor Wu became a target of the U.S. “China Initiative.” The China Initiative was a project implemented by the Trump administration in 2018 to prevent industrial espionage by China. Over six years until the Biden administration officially ended it in 2022, about 250 scientists, mostly presumed to be of Asian descent, were caught, and 112 of them lost their jobs.