袁莉2026年8月18日 Dongyan XuWho’s got the talent?谁拥有人才？In the competition for scientific and technological supremacy, that question rises above the rest. Not long ago, the answer was unequivocal: the United States.在科技霸主地位的竞争中，这个问题凌驾于一切之上。就在不久之前，答案还是毋庸置疑的：美国。But while it remains the world’s leading destination for ambitious scientific minds, a combination of funding cuts, restrictive immigration policies and suspicion of Chinese-born scientists is eroding its advantage just as China, despite serious shortcomings of its own, is becoming a credible alternative.但如今，美国虽然仍旧是全球最有抱负的科学人才向往的首选之地，但科研经费削减、限制性的移民政策以及对华裔科学家的猜疑正逐渐削弱美国的优势；与此同时，中国尽管仍存在诸多严重不足，却正在成为一个越来越有竞争力的替代选择。The appeal of each country can be seen in two events of the past few months. The four winners of this year’s Fields Medal, one of mathematics’ highest honors, included two scholars born in China who had come to the United States for advanced studies. They flourished in — and remain in — the West.过去几个月发生的两件事恰好体现了两国各自的吸引力。菲尔兹奖是数学领域的最高荣誉之一，今年该奖的四位得主中，有两位是出生于中国、后来赴美深造的学者。他们在西方学术体系中取得了出色成就，并且目前仍留在西方。Then there is Zhilin Yang. Like many Chinese, he came to the United States for his graduate degree. But rather than stay, he returned to China to start Moonshot AI. In July, his company released an impressive open-source A.I. model, called Kimi K3, that comes close to the performance of the best models made in America — at a lower cost.然后是杨植麟。和许多中国人一样，他赴美攻读研究生学位。但与那些选择留下来的人不同，他后来回到中国，创办了月之暗面。今年7月，他的公司发布了一款相当出色的开源人工智能模型Kimi K3，其性能已经接近美国最顶尖的模型，而成本却更低。Mr. Yang had no shortage of opportunities in the United States when he received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon in 2019. But he told Ruslan Salakhutdinov, a computer science professor and his doctoral thesis adviser, that he was determined to build a company in China.杨植麟2019年从卡内基梅隆大学获得博士学位时，在美国并不缺机会。但他告诉他的博士生导师、计算机科学教授鲁斯兰·萨拉赫丁诺夫，他已经下定决心要在中国创办一家企业。“The U.S. still has a big, big advantage. We get the best people,” Mr. Salakhutdinov said. “But China will become more attractive. In the A.I. space, it’s becoming very clear.”“美国仍然有非常大的优势。我们能吸引到最好的人才，”萨拉赫丁诺夫说。“但中国会越来越有吸引力。在人工智能领域，这一点已经变得非常明显。”杨植麟在卡内基梅隆大学获得博士学位后决定回国，后来创办了月之暗面。 Tingshu Wang/ReutersChina has also become more successful at recruiting academic scientists from abroad. Omar Yaghi, who shared last year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, left the University of California, Berkeley, for Tsinghua University, where he will lead an institute using A.I. to accelerate the discovery of new materials. Since last year, universities in mainland China and Hong Kong have recruited at least eight prominent mathematicians from Western institutions. Joshua Zahl, who collaborated with Hong Wang, one of the Fields Medal winners this year, took a full-time professorship at Nankai University. He declined to discuss his move.中国在从海外招募学界科学家方面也变得更加成功。去年与他人共同获得诺贝尔化学奖的奥马尔·亚吉离开加州大学伯克利分校，加入清华大学，将在那里领导一个利用人工智能加速新材料发现的研究所。自去年以来，中国大陆和香港的大学已从西方的学术机构招募了至少八位著名数学家。曾与今年菲尔兹奖得主之一王虹合作的约书亚·扎尔已全职受聘于南开大学。他拒绝就此次工作变动置评。These are significant wins for a country where Tu Youyou was the only scientist working in mainland to have received a Nobel Prize in a scientific category.对于一个曾经只有屠呦呦一位在中国大陆工作的科学家获得科学类诺贝尔奖的国家来说，这些都是意义重大的成果。The biggest change in China’s recruiting power is money, said Dong Jielin, who researches Chinese science and technology policy. Two decades ago, she said, scientists returning from abroad were expected to sacrifice financially in the name of serving the country. Now Chinese universities can offer salaries that are competitive with those in Europe, along with generous relocation packages.研究中国科技政策的董洁林说，中国吸引人才能力最大的变化在于资金。她说，20年前，从海外回国的科学家通常被期待以报国之名做出经济待遇上的牺牲。而如今，中国大学提供的薪资已能与欧洲竞争，并提供优厚的安家补贴。Still, after the Fields Medal winners were announced, one question emerged in the extensive Chinese media coverage and an outpouring of online discussion: Can China’s academic system give unproven young researchers the freedom, patience and tolerance for failure they need to become exceptional?不过，菲尔兹奖今年的得主公布后，在中国媒体的广泛报道和网络热议中，一个问题随之浮现：中国的学术体系能否给予那些尚未证明自己的年轻研究人员足够的自由、耐心，以及容忍失败的空间，让他们最终成长为杰出人才？The two Chinese-born winners, Ms. Wang and Yu Deng, entered Peking University in 2007. Mr. Deng, an International Mathematical Olympiad gold medalist, received direct admission to the university’s mathematics program. After his sophomore year, he transferred to M.I.T., earned his doctorate from Princeton and became a professor at the University of Chicago.两位华裔获奖者王虹和邓煜于2007年进入北京大学。邓煜曾是国际数学奥林匹克竞赛金牌得主，被直接保送到北大数院。大二结束后，他转学到麻省理工学院，在普林斯顿获得博士学位，并成为芝加哥大学教授。王虹（右）在7月领取菲尔兹奖。她和另一位获奖者邓煜（最左）多年前离开中国，赴海外继续深造和发展。He said pursuing doctoral study abroad was common among Chinese students in basic science at the time. Chinese mathematics has improved substantially since then, he said, and publications by China-based researchers in leading mathematics journals have risen markedly.他说，当时在基础科学领域，赴海外念博在中国学生中很普遍。他表示，自那以后，中国的数学水平已经取得了长足进步，中国本土的研究人员发表在顶尖数学期刊上的论文数量也大幅增加。Ms. Wang, 35, entered Peking University at 16 to study earth and space sciences and transferred into mathematics a year later.王虹今年35岁，16岁时进入北大，最初学习地球与空间科学，一年后转入数学系。She went to the École Polytechnique near Paris before doing further graduate studies at M.I.T. In a video, she described how her doctoral adviser at M.I.T. had listened patiently when she disagreed with others. “It helped me to gain confidence,” said Ms. Wang, now a professor at both New York University and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France. She declined requests to be interviewed.她去了巴黎附近的巴黎综合理工学院，随后在麻省理工学院继续研究生学习。在一段视频中，她讲述了自己在麻省理工学院其他人意见不同时，她的博士导师会耐心地听她解释。“这帮助我建立了自信，”王虹说。她目前在纽约大学和法国高等科学研究所担任教授。她拒绝接受采访。In a video posted by the Simons Foundation after the Fields Medals were announced, she said she felt “a little discouraged” but found professors in France and the United States who helped her gain confidence. Ms. Wang was not criticizing Peking University, but her remark resonated widely in China, where many people treated “discouraged” as shorthand for their own experiences in a highly competitive education system shaped by punishment and shame. The hashtag “discouraged” remains censored on the social media platform Weibo.菲尔兹奖公布后，西蒙斯基金会发布了一段视频。王虹在视频中说，自己曾经感到“有点discouraged（受挫）”，但后来在法国和美国都遇到了帮助她建立自信的教授。王虹并不是在批评北京大学，但她提到的“discouraged”一词在中国引起了广泛共鸣。许多人把这个词当作是对自己在一个由惩罚和羞辱塑造的高度竞争教育体制中类似经历的一种简单概括。在社交媒体平台微博上，“discouraged”这一话题标签至今仍受到审查。“If they had not left China at 20, would they still be standing on that prize stage today?” asked a YouTube commentator who goes by Laozhou Hengmei. China’s scientific achievements, he argued, still did not match its economic size and abundance of talent.“如果他们20岁时没有离开中国，今天还能站在那个领奖台上吗？”一位名为“老周横眉”的YouTube评论员问道。他认为，中国的科研成就仍然与其经济体量以及庞大的人才储备不相匹配。China can increasingly match the funding and infrastructure that attract prominent scientists. What it has more difficulty reproducing are the freedom, trust and institutional stability that allow young talent to flourish. Those remain among America’s strongest advantages, and the very advantages its current policies are putting at risk.中国在资金和基础设施上已越来越接近吸引顶尖科学家的水平。但更难复制的是那种让年轻人才得以茁壮成长所需的自由、信任和制度稳定性。而这些仍然是美国最强大的优势，也正是其当前政策正在危及的优势。奥马尔·亚吉去年在瑞典发表演讲。他做了一个不同寻常的举动——离开美国名校加州大学伯克利分校，前往北京的清华大学任职。“The U.S. used to be sort of the default, the no-brainer option,” Terence Tao, an Australian-born Fields medalist who is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a video.“过去，美国有点像默认选项，是不用动脑筋的选择，”出生于澳大利亚的菲尔兹奖得主、加州大学洛杉矶分校教授陶哲轩在一段视频中说。Last year, the Trump administration’s suspension of federal funding to U.C.L.A. affected both his personal grant and an institute he helps lead. The funding was reinstated after a successful lawsuit. But he has warned that abrupt funding disruptions can derail multiyear projects and damage researchers’ trust in the system.去年，特朗普政府暂停对加州大学洛杉矶分校的联邦资助，这一举措影响了他个人的研究经费，也影响到了他参与领导的一个研究所。后来，在一场诉讼获胜后，这些经费得以恢复。但他警告说，科研经费突然中断可能打乱持续多年的研究项目，也会损害科研人员对整个科研体系的信任。“The best and brightest may not automatically come to the U.S. as they have for decades,” he said.“最优秀和最聪明的人可能不会再像过去几十年那样自然而然地来到美国了，”他说。Foreign students received nearly 44 percent of the STEM doctorates awarded by American universities in 2023. Students from China earned 17 percent of all U.S. doctorates in science and engineering in 2020, and about 87 percent of Chinese recipients from 2005 to 2015 intended to stay, a 2023 study found.2023年，美国大学授予的STEM博士学位中，外国学生所获比例接近44%。2023年的一项研究发现，2020年，中国学生获得了美国所有科学与工程博士学位的17%；在2005年至2015年间获得博士学位的中国学生中，大约87%原本打算留在美国。The United States is now making that pipeline less dependable. The number of visas issued to international students fell by roughly one-third in 2025.而如今，美国正在让这条人才输送管道变得不再那么可靠。2025年，美国向国际学生发放的签证数量下降了大约三分之一。Last month, the Trump administration finalized a rule limiting how long foreign students can remain without applying for an extension. Announcing the measure, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said it would keep them focused on their “primary purpose: completing their studies and returning home.”上个月，特朗普政府最终确定了一项规定，限制外国学生在不申请延期的情况下可以留在美国的时间。国土安全部长马克韦恩·马林在宣布这一措施时表示，这项规定将让外国学生专注于他们的“首要目的：完成学业并回国”。Mr. Deng, 37, the 2026 Fields medalist, said many universities in China, the United States and elsewhere had contacted him. He was considering his options but will remain at the University of Chicago for now. His research, collaborators and quality of life would all influence his decision, he said.今年的菲尔兹奖得主、37岁的邓煜表示，中国、美国以及其他国家的许多大学都联系过他。他正在考虑各种选择，但目前仍将留在芝加哥大学。他说，自己的研究、合作伙伴以及生活质量都会影响最终决定。I asked whether, if he were 20 today, he would still leave China for the United States. He noted the cuts to research funding and knowledge of the people affected by visa problems.我问他，如果今天他20岁，他是否还会离开中国去美国。他提到了研究经费的削减，以及有人受到签证问题的影响。“If I were making the decision in China today,” he said, “I would think much more carefully about whether to come to the United States.”“如果我今天是在中国面临这个选择，”他说，“我会更加认真地考虑，是否还要来美国。”袁莉为《纽约时报》撰写“新新世界”专栏，专注中国及亚洲科技、商业和政治交叉议题。翻译：纽约时报中文网点击查看本文英文版。获取更多RSS：https://feedx.net https://feedx.site