To many Chinese, DeepSeek’s success is a victory for China’s education system, proof that it equals that of the United States or has even surpassed it.

在许多中国人看来，DeepSeek的成功是中国教育系统的胜利，证明后者已经与美国的教育系统不相上下，甚至已经超越了美国。

The core team of developers and scientists behind DeepSeek, the Chinese start-up that has jolted the A.I. world, all attended university in China, according to the company’s founder. That’s a contrast with many Chinese tech companies, which have often sought talent educated abroad.

DeepSeek是一家震惊人工智能界的中国初创公司，该公司创始人称，其背后的核心开发人员和科学家团队都曾就读于中国的大学。这与许多中国科技公司的做法形成了鲜明对比，它们通常都会寻求在国外接受教育的人才。

As Chinese commenters online basked in Americans’ shocked reactions, some pointed to the high number of science Ph.D.s that China produces annually. “DeepSeek’s success proves that our education is awesome,” read one blog post’s headline.

中国网民对美国人的震惊反应津津乐道，一些人指出，中国每年都培养出大量科学博士。一篇博文的标题写道：“DeepSeek的成功，证明了我们教育绝对牛”。

Acclaim has even poured in from overseas. Pavel Durov, the founder of the messaging platform Telegram, said last month that fierce competition in Chinese schools had fueled the country’s successes in artificial intelligence. “If the U.S. doesn’t reform its education system, it risks ceding tech leadership to China,” he wrote online.

来自海外的赞誉也纷至沓来。通讯平台Telegram的创始人帕维尔·杜罗夫上个月表示，中国学校的激烈竞争助长了中国在人工智能领域的成功。他在网上写道：“如果美国不改革教育体系，就有可能把科技领导权拱手让给中国。”

The reality is more complicated. Yes, China has invested heavily in education, especially in science and technology, which has helped nurture a significant pool of talent, key to its ambition of becoming a world leader in A.I. by 2023.

现实情况要复杂得多。是的，中国在教育，特别是科技领域投入了大量资金，这有助于培养大量人才，这对中国到2023年成为人工智能领域世界领导者这一雄心至关重要。

But outside of the classroom, those graduates must also contend with obstacles that include a grinding corporate culture and the political whims of the ruling Communist Party. Under its current top leader, Xi Jinping, the party has emphasized control, rather than economic growth, and has been willing to crack down on tech firms it deems too influential.

但在课堂之外，这些毕业生还必须面对各种障碍，其中包括严苛的企业文化和执政党共产党不可预测的政策。在现任最高领导人习近平的领导下，共产党强调的是控制而非经济增长，并不惜打击其认为影响力过大的科技公司。

DeepSeek has managed to evade many of those pressures, in part because it kept a low profile and its founder declared his commitment to intellectual exploration, rather than quick profits. It remains to be seen, though, how long it can continue doing so.

DeepSeek之所以能够躲过这些压力，部分原因是它保持了低调，其创始人宣布致力于知识探索，而不是急功近利。但它还能这样坚持多久有待观察。

“There are many young, energetic and talented researchers and engineers inside China. I don’t think there’s a big gap in terms of education between China and the U.S. in that perspective, especially in A.I.,” said Yiran Chen, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke University. “But the constraint is really from other parts.”

“中国有很多年轻、有活力、有才华的研究人员和工程师。我认为从这个角度来说，中美之间的教育差距并不大，尤其是在人工智能方面，”杜克大学电气与计算机工程系教授陈怡然说。“制约因素其实来自其他方面。”

For many in China, the strength of its education system is closely tied to the nation’s global status. The government has invested heavily in higher education, and the number of university graduates each year, once minuscule, has grown more than 14-fold in the past two decades. Several Chinese universities now rank among the world’s best. Still, for decades, China’s best and brightest students have gone abroad, and many have stayed there.

对许多中国人来说，教育系统的实力与国家的全球地位息息相关。中国政府在高等教育上投入了巨资，每年的大学毕业生人数曾经非常少，但在过去20年里增长了14倍多。中国多所大学现在已跻身世界一流行列。尽管如此，几十年来，中国最优秀、最聪明的学生都去了国外，而且很多都留在了那里。

By some metrics, that is starting to change.

从某些指标来看，这种情况正在开始改变。

2023年，中国顶尖学府之一清华大学的毕业生。过去20年来，中国大学毕业生人数急剧增长。

China produced more than four times as many STEM graduates in 2020 as the United States. Specifically in A.I., it has added more than 2,300 undergraduate programs since 2018, according to research by MacroPolo, a Chicago-based research group that studies China.

2020年，中国培养的STEM毕业生人数是美国的四倍多。根据芝加哥研究中国的智库MacroPolo的研究，自2018年以来，中国在人工智能领域增加了2300多个本科专业。

By 2022, nearly half of the world’s top A.I. researchers came from Chinese undergraduate institutions, as opposed to about 18 percent from American ones, MacroPolo found. And while the majority of those top researchers still work in the United States, a growing number are working in China.

MacroPolo发现，到2022年，全球近一半的顶尖人工智能研究人员来自中国的本科院校，而来自美国本科院校的研究人员仅占约18%。虽然这些顶尖研究人员大部分仍在美国工作，但越来越多的人在中国工作。

“You’re churning out all this talent over the last few years. They’ve got to go somewhere,” said Damien Ma, MacroPolo’s founder.

“过去几年培养出了这么多人才。他们得有地方去，”MacroPolo的创始人马旸说。

Washington has also made it harder for Chinese students in certain fields, including A.I., to obtain visas to the United States, citing national security concerns.

华盛顿还以国家安全为由，加大了包括人工智能在内的某些领域的中国学生获得美国签证的难度。

“If they’re not going to go abroad, they’re going to start some company” or work for a Chinese one, Mr. Ma said.

“如果他们无法出国，他们就会创办一些公司”，或者为中国公司工作，马旸说。

Some have criticized China’s educational system as overly exam-oriented and stifling to creativity and innovation. The expansion of China’s A.I. education has been uneven, and not every program is producing top-tier talent, Mr. Ma acknowledged. But China’s top schools, such as Tsinghua University and Peking University, are world-class; many of DeepSeek’s employees studied there.

有人批评中国的教育体系过于侧重应试，扼杀了创造力和创新力。马旸承认，中国人工智能教育的发展并不平衡，并非每个项目都能培养出一流人才。但中国的顶尖学校，如清华大学和北京大学，都是世界一流的，DeepSeek的许多员工都曾在那里学习。

The Chinese government has also helped foster more robust ties between academia and enterprises than in the West, said Marina Zhang, a professor at the University of Technology Sydney who studies Chinese innovation. It has poured money into research projects and encouraged academics to contribute to national A.I. initiatives.

悉尼科技大学研究中国创新教授的教授玛丽娜·张（音）表示，与西方国家相比，中国政府促进了学术界与企业之间更紧密的联系。它向研究项目投入大量资金，并鼓励学术界为国家人工智能计划做出贡献。

Yet government involvement is also one of the biggest potential threats to Chinese innovation.

然而，政府参与也是中国创新面临的最大潜在威胁之一。

Beijing has blessed the A.I. sector — for now. But in 2020, after deciding that it had too little control over major companies like Alibaba, it launched a sweeping, yearslong crackdown on the Chinese tech industry. (DeepSeek’s founder, Liang Wenfeng, pivoted to A.I. from his previous focus on speculative trading, in part because of a separate government crackdown there.)

目前，北京对人工智能行业暂且给予厚待。但在2020年，中国政府认为自己对阿里巴巴等大公司的控制力太弱，对中国科技行业发起了为期数年的全面打压。（DeepSeek的创始人梁文锋从之前专注投机性交易转向人工智能，部分原因是中国政府另一项对投机性交易领域的打击行动。）

The resulting layoffs at tech companies, combined with the uncertainty of the sector’s future, helped diminish the appeal of a sector that once attracted many of China’s top students. Record numbers of young people have opted instead to compete for civil service jobs, which are low-paying but stable.

随之而来的科技公司裁员以及该行业未来的不确定性令这个曾经吸引许多中国顶尖学生的行业不再具备从前的吸引力。相反，数量创纪录的年轻人选择去竞争工资低但较为稳定的公务员工作。

A.I. has been somewhat shielded from the brain drain so far, in part because of its political imprimatur, said Yanbo Wang, a professor at the University of Hong Kong who studies China’s tech entrepreneurship. He added that he expected more successful Chinese A.I. start-ups to emerge soon, driven by young people. But it is impossible to say what China’s A.I. landscape would have looked like if Beijing had been more tolerant toward big tech companies in recent years, he added.

香港大学研究中国科技创业的教授王彦波（音）说，到目前为止，人工智能行业在某种程度上没有受到人才流失的影响，部分原因是它得到了政治上的认可。他预计，在年轻人的推动下，中国很快会出现更多成功的人工智能初创企业。但他还说，如果北京近年来对大型科技公司更宽松一点的话，不知道中国的人工智能格局会发展成什么样子。

“China’s long-term A.I. competitiveness hinges not only on its STEM education system, but also on its handling of private investors, entrepreneurs and for-profit companies,” he added.

 “中国长期的人工智能竞争力不仅取决于它的STEM教育体系，还取决于它对私人投资者、企业家和营利性公司的处理方式。”

去年，上海人工智能大会上的中国展台。

Even within private companies, employees often must contend with a focus on quick results. That has led to a widely accepted stereotype, including within China, that Chinese engineers are better at improving on other people’s innovations than at coming up with their own.

即使在民营企业，雇员也常常必须应付急功近利的要求。这导致了一种即便在中国也被广泛接受的刻板印象——中国工程师更擅长改进别人的创新，而不是提出自己的创新。

Mr. Liang, DeepSeek’s founder, has lamented as much, noting last year that “top talents in China are underestimated. Because there’s so little hard-core innovation happening at the societal level, they don’t have the opportunity to be recognized.”

DeepSeek的创始人梁文锋也对此表示遗憾，“顶尖人才在中国是被低估的。因为整个社会层面的硬核创新太少了，使得他们没有机会被识别出来，”他在去年指出。

DeepSeek’s success may hinge as much on how it differed from other Chinese tech companies as on how it shared their strengths. It was financed by the profits from its parent hedge fund. And Mr. Liang has described hiring humanities graduates in addition to computer scientists, in the spirit of fostering a freewheeling intellectual atmosphere.

DeepSeek的成功可能既取决于它与其他中国科技公司的不同之处，也取决于与这些公司共同的优势。它的资金来自其母公司对冲基金的利润。梁文锋还表示，公司除了计算机科学家外，还会雇用人文学科学生，营造一种自由的知识氛围。

Since DeepSeek’s breakout success, some voices have urged more Chinese firms to emulate its model. An online commentary from the Communist Party committee of Zhejiang Province, where DeepSeek has its headquarters, declared the need to “trust in young talent” and give leading companies “greater control over innovation resources.”

自从DeepSeek取得突破性成功以来，一些声音敦促更多中国公司效仿其模式。DeepSeek总部所在的浙江省党委在网上发表评论称，需要“相信年轻人才”，并给予领先企业“更多创新资源调配权”。

But the best way for China to capitalize on its well-educated, ambitious A.I. work force may be for the government to get out of the way.

但对中国来说，要想利用其受过良好教育、雄心勃勃的人工智能人才，最好的方式可能是政府不要插手。

“Innovation requires as little intervention and management as possible,” Mr. Liang said in another interview. “Innovation often comes by itself, not as something deliberately planned, let alone taught.”

“创新需要尽可能少的干预和管理，”梁文锋在另一次采访中表示。“创新往往都是自己产生的，不是刻意安排的，更不是教出来的。”