berliner. >> watch saturdays at 9:30 a.m. and p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span 2. >> cgrs is back next week. e nate returns monday at 3 p.m. eastern, senators wl continue work on more of pridt biden's judicial nominations for u. district. the house gavels and on tuesday. virginia democratic ngsswoman elected jennifer mcclellan was recently elected to reath late representative will be sworn in as you will become the first black woman to represent virginia in congress and will fill the last vacant house seat. ter in the week, members will take up legislation to prohibit federal officials from pressuring social media companies to censor speech. watch the house live on c-span, the senate on c-span 2 and all congressional coverage on sp now, our free mobile app or

online at www.c-span.org. >> next, look at how educational institutions in china's strategic and emerging industries, specifically artificial intelligence and semiconductor manufacturing. this is from georgetown university and the university of north carolina at chapel hill testifying before the u.s. china economic and security review commission.

>> dr. simon will talk about china's promotion of the semiconductor industries's master witnesses to the remarks to seven minutes to serve time for russians and answers. we will begin with ms. peterson. >> cochairs and distinguish commissioners and staff, thank you for the opportunity to testify on how china's education system is training its artificial intelligence workforce. today, i will assess how china has plans to put talent at its core and shape its ai education

system. i will conclude with four recommendations with how the u.s. cannick results on ai talent competitiveness. china's well aware of the importance of ai talent in fueling its ambition and has noted that it has key talent shortages. in 2020, china's ministry of human resources and social security released a report that quantified and ai talent gap of more than 5 million workers. only one person for every 10 openings for ai engineers and technicians. that report stated that without progress, the talent gap could exceed tell million by 2025. -- 10 million by 2025. china has relied on several ai education specific government plans which i detail in my written testimony. notably, china has taken a holistic approach to ai education and its national ai strategy defines ai education with the inherently

interdisciplinary ai plus x model which integrates ai and other subjects and that includes technical topics such as math, computer science and biology but also explicitly includes sociology and law. as a direct response to these plans, the ministry of education mandated ai in high school curricula in 2017 and standardized and undergraduate ai major in 2019. this is now offered at over 440 universities and is china's most popular new major. universities have also launched more than 50 ai institutes. this exceeds the plans goals to have at least 100 ai majors and 50 ai institutes by 2020. many of china's most elite universities offer the ai major including all of the ivy league equivalency and all of the seven sons of national defense.

2022 diverges from this elite track. with a few exceptions such as peking university, the 95 institutions that added the ai major in 2022 were mainly lower tier including multiple vocational colleges in rural areas. while this could expand china's ai talent pipeline, it also runs the risk that china's push could lead to limited instructional resources. this is especially pronounced in under resourced areas which could produce underwhelming results. beyond the undergraduate level, another strategic plan calls for increasing the number of graduate students studying ai especially at the doctoral level. this plan also highly encourages industry partnerships. it asks leading ai companies to train university instructors and the latest cutting edge methods

and for company research is to have double employment at universities and r&d labs and certification training and host entrepreneurship. to cite one example of industry partnership, one company that's on the u.s. entity list for human rights violations has partnered with public colleges and universities to launch several ai colleges across china. students are able to work directly with engineers on their voice recognition and translation projects. i will close by examining implications. since the u.s. education system is highly decentralized, it has a much less uniform approach -- approach to ai education than china. the u.s. is currently prioritizing computer science education more than ai. well this is an essential component of training talent to

potentially perform ai work, china has shown is a step ahead through its incorporation of cs education into formalized ai study programs. these programs are designed to include some of the latest cutting edge ai research funding and are directly informed by partnerships with leading chinese ai companies. furthermore, research has shown that despite china's two decades of talent recruitment drives, nationals either do not return or do so part-time mostly due to weariness of working in china and potentially confronting workplace politics. a recent science study found that for those who return to the talent plan, recruits are are of high calendar and show a productivity on due to larger access to funding and resources in china. however, their performance is still out done by top caliber scientists who chose to reject participation offers. immigration retention has been a

court u.s. strength with 91% of top chinese students with usaid doctorates still in the u.s. five years after graduating. long-term state rates are also high. amid ongoing strategic competition with china across dimensions including ai, the u.s. has several crucial opportunities to dance its own ai education and work force pipeline. i will close by providing a set of four recommendations for how the united states can boost its own ai competitiveness and these recommendations are first, starting at the secondary school level, u.s. education should evolve its focus from computer science education to additionally incorporate ai and an increase partnership with industry to bring expertise into the classroom. second, the national institute of standards and technology should work with u.s. industry to establish standards for ai and related certification similar to the process

coordinated for cyber education. third, the office of establish hiring criteria for federal ai and ai adjacent jobs that are based on work portfolios and certification. fourth, congress should provide increased funding to the national science foundation, innovative technology experiences for students and teachers also known as itest which should increase the number of ai initiatives and develop k-12 students in relevant career paths. thank you again for the opportunity to testify before the commission on this important topic and i look forward to taking your questions. >> thank you. >> thank you. let me thank the commissioners for providing an opportunity to speak before you. i will talk today about the training education and deployment of semiconductor and i.t. talent in china.

in 2021, the semiconductor industry grew about 20% with revenues rising to about $590 billion. with that kind of growth, it will soon become a $1 trillion industry and that kind of growth will be anticipated in the future. it's safe to say the entire semiconductor industry is faced with the same challenge, to recruit and attract as well as develop and retain the qualified talent needed to sustain the industry in the years ahead. the search for talent therefore is a significant issue among all parts of the semiconductor industry. the chinese situation is particular difficult because it is playing a catch-up role as it tries to respond to the increasing number of restrictions placed by the u.s. government and its allies. simply stated, without a sustainable pipeline of high-caliber talent, china's goals for the semiconductor sector, especially in terms of

further indigenous asian will not be achievable. today, china accounts for a 35% share of the global semiconductor market, making it the one economy with the single largest share of that market. its efforts to develop more and more elements of the semiconductor value chain are driven, not only by its internal demand, but also right now the clear recognition that with the imposition of new stringent controls by the united states, the country's only hope to meet its growing demand for advanced semiconductors must come from domestic sources. the situation regarding the supply and demand of talent for the semiconductor sectors is complex because of the suddenness which -- with which the pressures have increased. a region but likes have increased many of which are proving difficult to overcome. the answer is not simply to be found in graduating more students from chinese colleges

and universities. currently, estimates range that the shortage today and into the future will be somewhere between 200-300,000 skilled workers that will be needed in this critical sector. it's also estimated recently that only about 15-20% of those who graduate with degrees in semiconductors actually work in the industry. 2020, their team .7% of the 210,000 graduates chose to work in the industry. there are many reasons for this. many graduates don't possess the right sense -- sets of skills that are demanded by industry. a large number of the schools have faculty that don't have ample engagement with the industry to understand the real needs of companies. a large number of institutions do not have pilot research or production lines for training students appropriately.

since the big push for educating work graduates and specializing in semiconductor engineering and i.t. design began, there has been a big curriculum restructuring among many universities. in 2003, china established ic design and integrated systems as a major. in 2012, it became a show major. in 2020, it became one of the 14 key disciplines that are high-priority areas in terms of overall education. this means the chinese government sees this as strategic areas for educational development. along with the status of ic -- i.t. engineering discipline, 28 colleges were designated to be created as national demonstration microelectronics colleges. a group of nine were designated in the first group and the other 70 will be given money later

down the line. these are the best and brightest in terms of where china's student ought to be going. this training capability has continued to grow. in october 2020, the a drc and the administration held a joint conference about creating a national integrated circuit, industry, education platforms designed to enhance the collaboration between universities and specific companies. according to a recent article, one key problem continues to be that the industry and the demand for talent is growing so fast that companies cannot wait the 4-5 year cycle for graduates. this has led to the establishment of a number of auxiliary institutions that are vocational and providing quick training so students can come online in the workforce very rapidly while the establishment of these training schools is

very important, we should not lose sight of the role of universities. they are strategically important to the long-term solution. one problem is the difference in the curriculum between the u.s. and china. in the u.s., people going to work in semiconductors come from a broader array of disciplines including electrical engineering, chemical engineering, and information engineering. in china, especially with the heightened focus on meeting specific industry needs, there is a greater emphasis on microelectronics as a whole with a little dose of physics. with some exceptions, death is emphasized over breath. as more sectors become more complex, in the short term it is useful but may not be in the right direction in terms of long-term need. there is little doubt china has made a comprehensive commitment to address his talent shortage

in terms of the entire value chain of the semiconductor and i.t. industry. achieving self-reliance is a strategic national priority. will china come up with a grand solution to me is talent needs for the semiconductor industry? china has sought to utilize the same solution south korea deployed to catch up with japan in the semiconductor sector. it tries to hire retired or part-time engineers from socket. -- from south korea, japan or taiwan. recently, several simpson engineers were charged with violating samsung's ip regulations. taiwan stepped up its efforts to limit drc firms from poaching chinese employees from the islands semiconductor industry. many americans working in china have had to leave the country. china's talent recruitment programs do not seem to operate comprehensive solution even

though there has been an increase in the numbers of people returned to china. the burden of following china semiconductor challenge holds squarely on the domestic education this them. we can see ample evidence of progress being made. it is likely china's talent in semiconductors remains a significant problem for some time in the future area thank you. >> thank you. i am going to turn to the commissioner. we will do this alphabetically. vice chairman wong. >> thank you. mrs. pearson, and lots of your testimony is focused on the ai major or focus on ai. ai is cross disciplinary, pulling from not just cs but, i

assume, since hissing data science, both engineering and theoretical disciplines. maybe i am under -- unaware of this, but we do not see specific proliferation of an ai major to the same extent as china. do you still have an advantage because of the strength of the education, particularly the higher education system we have in these individual disciplines that make up the ai discipline? strong, as you mentioned but strong ethics and philosophies strong cognitives, this whole area of brain study that can be applied to the ai sphere. basically, i am saying that in comparing us to china, aren't we still at an advantage? we do not have the same push to make ai a major. it is stray from our western perspective to make this a discipline study. >> that is an excellent

question. i will say first that there is no one agreed-upon definition or ai education. china has taken a stab at standardizing that and that is generally the approach the ministry of education takes two majors, to standardize them. for the ai major, it is standardized under the engineering category. those in the u.s. and china, especially in china before the launch of the ai major, it was pretty similar in both countries in which computer science departments where the main breeding ground for ai challenge. some of these computer science majors in both countries have an ai concentration or elective courses that can train you up. in china, they have taken that a step further would not just the ai major. they go beyond that to introduce

natural language processing and computer additions. to really get you into the machine learning anti-running techniques which are a bit more of an optional direction in the u.s. computer science. i will note there are several programs in the u.s.. there is no comprehensive tally we know of that really multiplies how many majors are but i will point to carnegie mellon who has a bachelor of science in artificial intelligence. the curriculum design also looks similar to what i have seen of the chinese approach where they are giving the introductory method and hands-on tools you need to learn how to design and deploy ai systems. i would say that, while in the u.s., we are not intending at all for the u.s. to replicate the chinese approach as mentioned in earlier panels, the

decentralized approach is a strength of the u.s. system and allows for more of the organic development and the discussion and integration of ethics. to the degree that is why my recommendations hone in on starting the entrance early. china has clearly had success in starting their ai education early and allowing students to realize it is a possibility to work on those topics. to the extent that you can integrate that early on in the u.s. education system will help more people concentrate in computer science with a focus on ai or ai majors entirely. >> to standardize education and set up a higher education system in these majors and set of research institutes in the majors and public-private partnerships, is this focus on what gets more media attention on general ai or narrow ai or does the distinction not matter when you are talking about this level of research education?

>> i have noticed they are doing both. there is ocean science and ai. those are more like application types. there are ones that actually focus a lot on ethics. but then there are also ones that are shifting into more future applications of ai like brain interfaces and things like that. like wuhan university is a good example of that. i would say that they are focusing on where applications being currently but also in the more forward leaving ones that we should be paying more attention to as they are on the true leading edge. >> thank you. >> commissioner. >> thank you. thank you to both of our witnesses. i want to pursue what commissioner wan was going after

and understand the quality of the education, as well as depth versus breadth. with things like self-healing chips, architecture on the core versus the edge and all of the various things you know a lot better than i am -- are the sanctions the u.s. has imposed and limitations relating to eu and enabling technologies -- production technologies, what kind of affect is this having? do you think that the work around, if they can be developed, might create new technologies that we will be behind?

mr. simon, do you want to start? >> my sense is that, while at the production level, the impact of our policies has already been felt, in the research level, i think it has not had much impact. the reason why is this is part of the international science and technology collaboration. the chinese have as much access as we do to all the international journals and publications that are out there. they are also part of all the international scientific and technical bodies that deal with any kind of related issues. there is no dearth of information flowing in and out of china. there is a lot of work that has been done to look at the top tier public educations in science and engineering that involve coauthorship by chinese and american authors.

increasingly, those are not ethnic partnerships. a chinese-american but also involve more widespread spectrums of americans and also different kinds of universities. i do not think the problem is on the research side right now. though, again, it will be important to see if some of the latest developments and different kinds of chips and materials does make its way into companies. the fact like they -- that they are paying such close attention to industry university partnerships and fostering an environment to facilitate collaboration suggests they recognize the problem and they are onto it. it will take a long while for them to work. as i cited in my larger paper, there are numerous examples of this. the second point is, at the best

universities, that is where this progress is being made. you have to understand this morning that there is a real -- of the trains education system. somebody used a hundred universities and i think that is too much. if you go beyond the first 25-30, at least on the civilian universities, we drop-off is very sharp. you can go to 100 of the top american universities in whatever field and get a pretty good education, a world-class education. in china, i think the drop-off is sharp and reveals itself in the quality of the faculty and the learning and instructional facilities that are available to the student. -- students. >> ms. peterson? >> i very much agree with what dr. simon said. that is why i highlighted this. even if it sounds shocking that

there is 450 universities even in 22 alone, the fact that -- in 2022 alone, the fact that 100 universities have added this, they are quite low tier universities. it is interesting in whether they are just jumping on the bandwagon and do not have the resources or quality of faculty to teach the concepts needed. also on the employer's side and demand side, they may not find the quality of education significant to employees that featured talent, even if there are talent shortages. they may not bite on that talent. there are a lot of anecdotal reports coming out on the widespread issue that are being raised across china and the tech sectors. on the export controls question, one thing that has not really been looked at that deserves

more attention is how this is going to change the calculations of semiconductor talent, now that they have been severely restricted. they are going to then choose to leave the country so that they would still be able to, in theory, access that know-how once they leave china's borders. that is something that i think would create a massive brain drain and exacerbate the semiconductor challenge shorted even further, domestically in china. >> think the witnesses for your statement and contributing your expertise. no questions from me at this time. >> i am going to pass and save mine until the end. commissioner halbert. >> thank you. ms. peterson, my first question is for you. have a number of questions i will submit for the record of my

first one is one of your recommendations was to incorporate higher criteria and ai skills at opm. it tells with that is that in the u.s. tech industry, talented ai researchers and engineers are often not working in the government because they are offered millions of dollars to work privately. it is hard for the government to compete with the private sector for height and engineering talent. elicit an example of the voice recognition, in-flight tech company that partnered with several colleges to partner across china, can you give us an idea of what that looked like and the mechanism of how it worked? >> to answer your second question first, there are a number of tech companies that have created ai colleges. this is something that predated the 20 18th and i referred to that said we need at least 50 of

these research institutes and colleges before 2020. i see the companies working most in the research institute side of things. they are really driving and taking the application scenarios that they are aware of as the most challenging things ac in the industry and directly bringing the problems in the classroom. they help to design that in mind and are also letting instructors and students alike in. these students can be undergraduates. there are usually more on the graduate side as i have seen. they are -- instructors are able to kind of work as companies like i fly tech and get the know-how and there is a cycle where they bring it back into the classroom area students can go do training at these

countries and -- companies and bring the know-how back into the classroom. have not seen formalized pathways for students to go work at places like fly tech in the future by would not be surprised if some of that talent then went to go work for them full-time. this is something that very much is not necessarily -- there is the urban divide that plays into this. while there are major tech companies bringing ai enabled education platforms to assist student learning into rural areas, that is not the same thing as people working at those companies directly coming to your classroom and teaching you about the cutting edge research findings and the industry findings. there, i see another divide in terms of the quality of education that people in moral areas perhaps cannot get because they do not have access to the

real industry process. >> thank you so much. before i run out of time, a question i would like to level for both of you is what's insight about china's efforts on ai or about how it is education to promote industries do you believe to be true that most people might disagree with? >> can you repeat the last part of your question? >> what insight about china's efforts on ai or about how it uses education to promote its industry do you believe to be true that most people might disagree with you? so much has been written about china and artificial intelligence and semiconductors. i am curious to know if there are facts that she believed to be true that a lot of other people may disagree with you on. that depart from the mainstream of what other people have already covered. >> from my understanding and

what i see in semiconductors, to prepare for this testimony, i went and looked at what was going on state-of-the-art with respect to american semiconductor companies. i think the use of ai, machine learning tools, data science and all of that are now heavily embedded in the mainstream of our industry. as i read this, i started to look for do i see a lots of examples of this happening in china? i think china is at a very embryonic level in making this happen but i think the education system has strong recognition that these tools are going to have to be brought into the mainstream education in order to make sure that graduates are able to meet the needs of this industry in the years ahead. the one thing we have to remember which is really critical is science popularization in china

something that is very important. because something is happening in ai or another advanced science area, the reality is the chinese government does see educating the general population in science as something to be important for the long-term development of the civilization. that is something that we should not lose sight of. it has -- thinking in a modern way, getting people out of this in the role areas where there is a lot of taboos and superstition, and to the modern world of the 21st century is something the government and ministry of education recognizes as the very important -- is very important to china's long-term development. not everyone growing up in a rural area is going to become an ai specialist but as a citizen, they need to understand what ai means to their lives and how it is going to be utilized.

whether china is doing this in the best way possible, i cannot confirm. it is happening. it happened like that the chinese technology revolution. as we came out of the cultural revolution, they were already 10 years behind it had a lots of catching up. i think this mass education effort is something we should not discount in helping to further educate the population. probably not to the level we would think adequate but nonetheless, for china, it is working and having an impact. >> and q. -- thank you. >> i want to actually follow that point but let me ask the question this way. i wonder how should we think about the requirements of a certain national ai education program.

because, what you described is really a massive cross effort from all levels in china. primary school, high school curriculum, ai majors. a skeptic might say this is what happens in a centralized system when the word has gone out that ai is a big and important thing. everybody at every level want to attach that label to whatever they are doing in order to get funds from the central government. you do wonder how many of these people coming out of these programs are actually capable of doing the kind of work that needs to be done to implement and make ai systems useful. i wonder if this might not turn out in some ways similar to computers where you have a relatively small number of can -- of people who design and a larger number of people who build them a larger number of people who have to be trained to

operate and maintain the systems and then a vast population of people who use them but do not understand them or have to be educated to a high level in order to use them effectively. what would a right size ai education program in this country look like? >> that is an excellent question. i share your system -- sentiments and i highlight the risks that they may run into challenges with shoddy implementation beyond the most elite universities. i would cite a more recent example like the whole chat gpt fevered. -- fever. you have all of these companies trying to support and develop similar copycats even though they do not have any background in that field of ai whatsoever.

like the food delivery giant is a good example of that. to more explicitly answer your question, i think there already are good programs in the u.s. and the high school level. one example that i would want to point you to is gwinnett county in georgia. they have this interdisciplinary approach to ai that introduces some of the technical concepts. it gets students interested in knowing if this is similar to what dr. simon set of know-how how ai is affecting your life but also get more of the rudimentary introductory technical understanding. to be able to develop that interest and potentially shape you working on those topics in the undergraduate level and beyond.

i would say, at the elementary school level, really introducing this is how ai is affecting your life. this is something similar to initiatives that have been done for a long time from the nsa trying to do outreach to help students understand this is what cybersecurity is, and this is why cybersecurity is important. this is how you can get involved and the different roles you can do. similar initiatives for that, on the technical and non-technical side. we emphasize the ai workforce is not just the most technically trained individuals but also those who are product managers and work on the commercial side and the legal side. everyone having a better understanding of how ai affects your life. there are certain individuals within that we have the most advanced typical training. i think this would produce the most robust ai talent pipeline

in the u.s. >> thank you. >> both made efforts to suggest that as of 2019 that was the last number with a very high percentage of top graduates in fields from china who were studying in the u.s. and staying in the u.s. for at lease five years or longer. do you have any sense of what happened more recently since covid and more broadly, ab this is something to deal with in the record? what kinds of policies might the u.s. pursuit to encourage people to stay? just a quick question about the current data. dr. simon. >> the last number i heard the other day was 1400. that is the number of scholars post-doctorate, and senator read that over the last two years have decided to go back even though they had positions in the u.s. that is not a big number but not

a small number either. a big question right now is many of these people literally are wrestling with whether they should stay, return to china cover or go to a third country. i have a number of examples of chinese friends in the u.s. that have been here, some for 20 years, who are talking about going to places like saudi arabia and kuwait to new universities that have been built there because they can do their research and work. they also can continue to collaborate with americans and chinese without running into political problems like they would if they stayed in one or the other country. i think we have to be cognizant that the recent events, with the violence in places like michigan state, some of the experiences of racism, suspicions under which there was under the chinese initiative etc. have really cast a dark cloud over

the professional lives of many people. i think we underestimate the degree to which this has had a never give -- had a negative impact against these people. they are very cautious right now. even if we wanted to promote more sino u.s. cooperation in research technology, a lot of these people would be hesitant. they do not want to communicate in some places with their former contact in china. i think we may -- i think we didn't go too far in terms of the impact -- that we did go too far in terms of the impact we had on these people. i think we need to be careful. i mentioned the semiconductor industry is a worldwide problem and the only way we solve our problem here in the united states is making sure there's a steady flow of students from

asia coming to the united states, willing to work on that. if we don't have that we won't be able to akeve our goals. think about how many projects we have going on in the united states. where is that talent going to come from? how will we meet the needs of those companies being set up, new plants and research centers and all that? it demands a huge amount of talent and i wonder has anyone sat town on the back of an envelope and calculated how our these will be met here domestically if we're not taking in chinese students and giving them h1b visas. >> i have several question, i think we have some time, i hope we can get through them. mr. simon i'm interested in your observation, your testimony, you didn't speak to it in your oral

testimony, that managerial requirements at factors and r&d levels have been given little attention in terms of education and we are very focused on the science side but when it comes to actually training people who canning many, that there's a lack of interest. could you elaborate on what you see as the implications, particularly for the semiconductor industry, particularly when it comes to training managers. >> i have been studying the electronics industry for four decades and i was part of the generation of people who were asked, can china innovate? no, china can't inknow vait. can china produce state of the art? no, it can't. one conclusion i came to is two arias of deficiency were one, the lk of professional cadre of -- of r&d managers.

in the chinese military we have r&d managers who manage big defense projects and they understand how these work and they know everything from budgets to personnel, etc. but in the civilian research side, that has been something that has been missing. we haven't seen that kind of professional cadre developed, nurtured, cultivated, etc. you would have thought that it would have happened in places like the chinese academy of sciences and the 100 or so institutes under that, but for seven years, i actually brought a delegation of institute directors and deputy directors to the united states to train them in three or four-week buckets about the managing these kind of issues. and i would tell you, you know, there was a process called premature promotion in china. because of the impact of the cultural revolution, a lot of young people had to be promoted into more senior posts before

they were ready and therefore they did not have that accumulated experience that one would have normally, let's say, in the u.s., by having gone through the ranks and reaching that level. so i think right now in the semiconductor industry, this is the big problem. if you looked a -- looked at it as a pyramid you'd say at the top are the most high-end, talented, managerial personnel who run these things. but you have to flip the pyramid on its head because the greatest need is also at that level. that's where they lack experienced people. i mentioned at the end they were hoping to get some of these people among americans and chinese americans, that were going to work in china from taiwan, maybe catch a couple of them in korea, etc. but that seems now to be -- that opportunity seems to be disappearing. so i think there's going to be a big gap in that area. i don't see anywhere in china on the technology side we see, i

described it. i don't see anywhere in the management schools where they're actually explicitly preparing managers for high tech careers in industries like semiconductor. the technology management programs that exist in china really, even though they try to copy a lot of what's going on in the united states, they really don't catch what needs to happen. particularly because the managers are not deployed on the ground in factories. they're too theoretical. they're not practical enough. soy worry that that's one of the achilles heel in the chinese efforts that they're trying to catch up. >> do you see that shortfall as a consequence of party dictate that they think poll toirks doctrine or idea solg the apps to management?

what -- what do you see as the reasons why people just aren't interested in management? >> in 2023, the answer is no. i think they understand. there is no reason to believe that the operation of a smic plant or ymtc plant or any one of those is experiencing any high-level interference. sure, i think that there are party committees in all of these organizations and when xi jinping makes his major speech at the latest party congress, everyone probably has a half a day of study stetions -- segs to make sure they're cognizant of what the president has said. i think beyond that it's all business. i think that maybe at some lower level factories, maybe in more state-owned enterprises, we see some of that more prevalent. clearly not in the kind of state of the art plants we're talking

about. i think it's all about business and i think it's all about the technology and competitiveness that they can achieve. >> we haven't spent a lot of time today talking about faculty. in both of your presentations, can you talk a little bit about where faculty are drawn from, where they're trained, how they're trained, what the quality of that training may be, and then what kind of standards do they take tests in order to teach in universities? what's the faculty like? >> so this is not an element that we have explicitly looked at as much so i defer to dr. simon. >> so let me give two perspectives. in the 1980's, 3% of high school tbraj watts went to university.

that number then by the late 1990's grew to 25% and today, according to the latest data, over 51% of high school graduates can go to university. you have to ask yourself, if the enrollments in universities are increasing so rapidly who is teaching these kids? that's a really big question. and the reason why you have this bifurcation is clearly that at the top tier, they're getting not only their own graduates, which is an incestuousness in the system. they tried to break it down but there's not enough places to go. the second source of course is getting people to come back after they've been in the u.s. or europe for a number of years. that's really why the talent programs have been so important for china is to recruit that faculty that are needed to staff these new positions across the entire system. and then also of course to drive the rernlg -- research. so there is a big problem.

the faculty -- the best and the brightest still stay in the united states. and if that's the case, then if you're getting the second tier, you know, coming from, i won't mention any u.s. university but say it's not the ivy leagues that they're coming -- coming back from, etc. what ends up happening is that they're not getting the kind of talent that they really want to have. that's what i they upped, during the period before china's initiative, at leasting their had upped the stakes. they were trying to get people by hook or by crook. that's also why the program broke down. because they couldn't get people to make a decisionering stay or go. so they gave them a choice. come for a couple of month, we'll make believe you're here for nine months. we'll break the rules but we'll make it work so you can be here and you can be there and you don't have to give up your tenured job at a u.s. university. but the reality is they still aren't able to meet the needs of all the faculty. that's why the bottom-tier

universities they're not going anywhere very, very quickly. but in the top ones it's just the opposite. that's why some made the top 30 or 35 of world-class universities in the rankings. it's because their faculty are producing world class students. and world class research. that is simply not occurring at other places in the country. >> thank you. i have another round.

>> i would say in terms of a.i. partnership there's a little early to tell. even with the a.i. major, i wouldn't -- i want to note here, the a.i. major is actually not the only initiative that china has. there's actually 34 other majors that china has that have the term intelligent invasion in them. like intelligent transportation and things like that. it's more context-specific, depending on your fields of interest. the a.i. one is a much more general field of study. but that has only begun in 2019. so we haven't even seen actually the first group of four-year graduates come out. they will come out this spring. and so it's similar with the

a.i. institutes, those are both the research institutes and the colleges that are teaching the a.i. major and all these other 34 related majors. we haven't seen concrete findings. it's a hard lynn to draw to say, this research was conducted that the institute and then translate it into the innovation game. but that's ongoing work i'm doing, studying what the research institutes are publishing and so are they focusing on more or less natural language process, ocean science, particularly curious if they are focusing more on surveillance or military applications. but i would also say that on a somewhat separate point we are also looking, measuring the job

demand for a.i. positions in china and so we can see that there are, you know, the four major hubs that are classically associated with the top economic hubs in china. so including the beijing region, those areas are huge vacuums for a.i. talent. so that is also not necessarily to say that there is diffusion that is occurring but those are interesting areas to watch to see what emerges out of those hubs of a.i. activity. >> when you say vacuum, you mean concentration -- >> i mean they are vacuuming them across, from different regions in the country and leaving them to potentially have talent shortages elsewhere. >> i want to just add one point quickly. one of the problems that we see in semiconductor is this rapid

turnover of personnel. now if you're a company, you obviously don't like rapid turnover of personnel but if you're looking at diffusion of knowledge, the movement of people the high level of talent mobility, is something that could turn out to be beneficial. because people bring the -- legally or illegally or whatever, you know, let's assume for the moment they didn't steal the i.t. but it's embedded that they brought with them the knowledge that they have. they're able to upgrade what's going on at the next place and the next job place. that actually turns out to have some beneficial effects even though the original company is not happy that they lost their job candidate or invested money in the training of their job candidate. there's this phenomena they say that there are hot companies and cold schools. where the schools are not interested but the companies are really interested. but there's theals opposite. cold companies and hot schools. schools that want to get their kids employed. but the companies are so nervous they're going to lose them after

six months or a year because of the turnover rate. but the positive if you set that, it does provide a vehicle for difawtion of know-how across the economy. >> i think you anticipated my next question which is you mentioned in your testimony that 236,000 employees were recruited from the market versus 67,000 coming from campuses. and i noticed yesterday there was a story of the slide of several big tech pdd, ali baba, of their stock value because they are competing for employees. can you talk with a little more granularity about those two points? that it's just people moving within the market rather than coming out -- excuse me, coming out of schools into these companies. and where is there the most

mobility? early stage career? what does it look like? >> my sense is that the companies go to the marketplace because they're looking for experienced talent. that's what they want. they don't like getting these newbies because many of them don't meet the initial expectations. i thought you could do a, b, c, and d, but you really can't do that. you heard this morning, some of it is apocryphal, but they want to put you right to work very quickly to add value. if you can't do that you're pacecally not very worthwhile. i think they, the company, the private companies in particular, are in the marketplace. the state-owned enterprises, i think there's some more pressure on them to go to the universities and to hire those people. simply because they're much more part of the system. and therefore i think they feel some obligation to do that. but even more importantly, they have -- they want to develop a

steady popline -- pipeline so they have people that are available even if they're not the best people that they've got people and they can work them through their system. i think that that's going to continue to be the case. i think that we're going, as we see with the proliferation of companies as a whole, particularry on the i.c. design side, that's what's made that market so lively, it's been such a big proliferation, they don't know where they can get the talent from. that's why these auxiliary vocational type schools have emerged. but again there's good news and bad news with those. some are very good. some are not so good. why? because if you're going to be very good you have to hire faculty who can teach at the state of the art. those people command a very high salary. -- sally. -- salary. which means you have to charge a high tuition. which meanses of you have to guarantee a job at the end or the applicant won't want to

spend the money to get this specialized training. we had this in the united states with respect to programmers. particularly i know on the west coast but i saw it also on the east coast, a number of schools emerged, six month train, pay the equivalent of a university education for one year, but most of them, those graduates were working in google, amazon, wherever after they finished in. china there's no guarantee like that. i think the students are dubious. the employers are dubious. so that's why in the marketplace, they can have a wider range of people to take a look at it. so you've also seen a proliferation of head hunting firms who are basically looking for talent and people tell me they get phone calls all the time. you're thinking of losing -- not lose bug moving your job, shifting your job. so i mean, it's -- the word chaos or chaotic is a good word. it is a little bit chaotic.

it may be short term because the chinese now are feeling the impact of the u.s. restrictions immediately almost. it may be in two or three years it will sort itself out a little bit. supply and demand, you know. will seem to work itself out. i think that all has to do with how fast they can improve the curriculum and the delivery of that curriculum to the students. >> my questions have been answered so let me ask everyone else if anyone else has any additional questions before we go back to robin. anyone else have anything else they want to ask? anyone remotely? ok, it's all yours. >> just one more question. since this is a hearing on education and training, and the future of the work force, i'm interested in if you know,

ms. peterson, how a.i. is being used to enhance education and training. >> yes. so that is -- that's a complementary effort. i did mention in response to one of my questions earlier that there are major platforms such as baidu that is trying to bring a.i.-enabled education. it's not -- it's a bit of a parallel concept where it's -- the virtual assistant type of approach. so that is actually quite widespread and bringing that to rural areas, that's meant to pose as an assistant, as a complementary method to rural teachers, to urban teachers. and so measuring the effectiveness of that is pretty much almost impossible. but it is something, it is also something that i would say is -- exists in the u.s. in a little bit of a different form where that's a bit more in person.

one of our research efforts has quantified the port foale of summer camps an after schools and things like that to enhance ample i. education as well. but this is another facet that is not necessarily, i wouldn't say it's as explicitly called upon in the strategic plans but it is one of the effects of how industry is trying to help build interest in sharpening the -- i think this kind of goes back to the first panel a little bit in talking about the lack of educational base that some students have especially in rural areas. so in theory, it seems like if it's the ample i.-enabled education methods are supposed to help fit each of the students a little bit better and tailor it to their learning styles

across a wide range of subjects, right, so like english, math, science, all of these other topics. i think that is something that might help them but it's still, at the end of the day, those really critical shortages and that very persistent rural-urban divide is not something i believe is necessarily solvable through just access to a learning platform. >> under normal circumstances, the market would have been filled with a.i. summer camps and a.i. programs, etc. but after the crackdown on companies like new oriental, etc., there was a desire to make sure that there's not just, you know, wealthy kids can go to these and the rest of the country is left behind. so i think we may see a different model develop where it's not just entrepreneurial, you know, people who are trying to open up a new business by

creating these camps. i think it may become part of an auxiliary element as part of the education system. my sense is that the ministry of education has been told. do not forget rural education that we don't want to have a bifurcated country. we don't want to have the 14 coastal city part of the country on the east coast and everything else. we know that in 1949 that produced a revolution. so preventing the bifurcation of the chinese economy in terms of quality of life, health care, educational access, etc., that's why going back to your session this morning, the big point about the role -- that should not be ignored. i was the executive vice chancellor for a university for five years, one of the four sino-u.s. joint venture universities, the one that developed our admissions policy

for letting in the chinese students. i do have to say, even though there are some shenanigans in the backdrop, more or less the system has a high degree of integrity. for americans doe we don't like it because we can't craft a class. if you're at duke or you're somewhere like that, you look across, you look at all sorts of things in terms of the background of the students other than just the s.a.t. or a.c.t. test. some schools no longer even require those tests. but in china, the only way to get close to any kind of equitable access is the use of these -- this kind of testing mechanism. that's why it hasn't disappeared. lots of stuff has been reformed in china and lots of stuff has gone away but the major vehicle by which you have upward mobility in china still is that, the question is how can they

improve what it is as an education tool so it doesn't end up with students who have just rote memory. in the first batch of state of the unions we got at d.k.u., 60% were from china. that was the quota we wanted. the one thing the students told us, and d.k.u. is a liberal arts oriented joint venture university. they said the thing we fun in the first several weeks is we were asked a question that we were never asked in our other education experience. i said, oh, what's that question? what do you think? what do you think? so that became the cry, you know. what do you think and how do you tell somebody how do you think in an educated, informed way. that's something i think china wants to cultivate, they just want to cultivate it within certain guardrails but i think that the problem with china always is, it's never a 0-1. it's somewhere in the spectrum of finding a balance where we

would be comfortable with the balance, they wouldn't be. but they want to find some balance. they clearly know that. and i think we see the improvement in the research environment, it really demonstrates the effort to give more degrees of freedom to the scientific and technical community to do their thing. that's why you have technological entrepreneurs, you know, who have proliferated, even with the crackdown that went on a year, year and a half ago. the reality is that there's no dearth of people with creative ideas in china. i think we would be making a big mistake if somehow we thought that creativity never emerged or is dead in china. i think that's not -- would not do us well as we look at the future of our relationship. >> if there are no other questions, then in conclusion, i want to say, as i did at the

beginning, we would like to remind you all that testimonies and transcripts from today's hearings will be posted on our website. i also commend to you the paper that was submitted by dr. hannam to the commission as well has interesting additional information. please also mark your calendars for the commission's upcoming hearing on china's global interference on march 23. so i want to thank all our witnesses, both dr. simon, ms. peterson, for this panel and all our previous pams, the commissioners for all of your attentiveness and participation, the staff who did so much important preparation, and we are adjourned. thank you. >> thank you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2023] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute,

which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

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