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China’s genius plan to win the AI race is already paying off
A network of ultra-competitive high-school talent streams has been turning out the leading lights of science and tech.
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For decades, genius classes have been turning out the leading lights of China’s science and technology sectors.
PHOTO : AFP
Zijing Wu
About three years ago, Ms Stacey Tang, a manager in a pharmaceuticals company in Beijing, received a peculiar phone call. A voice speaking from an unknown landline number instructed her to send her 15-year-old son to take a qualification test for the “genius class” at one of the city’s elite high schools.
It was November 2022, at the peak of Beijing’s Covid-19 lockdowns. Schools were mostly closed and any in-person contact was discouraged. Even so, the test setting sounded bizarre: a moving van that would drive the boy through the streets of the capital for an hour while he tackled college-level maths problems.
