China needs academic shake-up if it wants more innovations like DeepSeek, scholar says

Leading scholar Wang Shuguo’s criticism that narrow doctoral studies ‘shackle’ talent reverberates through higher education circles

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Criticism from noted academic comes as China works to overhaul its higher education system to cultivate talent amid intensifying rivalry with the United States. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 8:00pm, 31 May 2025

China’s doctoral education has long been under attack for overemphasising the number of published papers, along with their lack of groundbreaking research findings. At a recent forum in Beijing, a noted academic blamed the system for shackling talent and hindering innovation.

“Can you imagine the emergence of DeepSeek, if its founder Liang Wenfeng had pursued a PhD instead?” That was the question raised by Wang Shuguo, president of eastern China’s Fuyao University of Science and Technology, at the Sohu Annual Sci-Tech Conference on May 17.

Liang graduated in 2010 with a master’s degree in information and communication engineering, before co-founding a quantitative trading fund management firm.

He established DeepSeek in 2023. A year later, the artificial intelligence (AI) start-up shocked the world with its low-cost, open-source models that rivalled the products of OpenAI and other leading international players.

Wang argued that China’s latest technological breakthroughs did not happen in university laboratories, but were instead led by companies whose owners did not have PhDs.

He gave other examples, including Wang Xingxing, founder and CEO of Unitree – one of China’s top developers of quadrupedal and humanoid robots – and Frank Wang Tao, founder of DJI Technology, the world’s biggest drone company.

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