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[People News] Recently, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) introduced the Education Strengthening Plan (2024–2035), which proposes "expanding postgraduate education, steadily increasing the proportion of doctoral students, and vigorously developing professional degree postgraduate education." This means that China's upcoming "wave of PhD expansion" will become even more intense, further exacerbating the disconnect between doctoral education and society. This article briefly discusses two points.
1. Postgraduate education, including doctoral programs, should be closely tied to population trends and socioeconomic development levels. However, in China, the two are often disconnected, driven instead by policy directives. Unfortunately, the CCP’s policies in this regard are fundamentally flawed.
Since the mid-to-late 1980s, China's annual population growth rate has slowed and remained relatively stable, sharply contrasting with the significant fluctuations in the growth rate of graduate school admissions. Research by mainland scholars shows that the annual growth rate of graduate admissions correlates weakly with population growth, with a correlation coefficient of only 0.134. Between 1981 and 2020, China’s GDP grew at an annual average rate of 14.25%. During the same period, the correlation coefficient between the growth rate of graduate admissions and GDP growth was -0.006, indicating no relationship.
When the CCP resumed PhD programs in 1978, only 18 doctoral students were admitted nationwide. On January 1, 1981, the degree system was formally established. In the 1980s, the scale of doctoral admissions remained relatively small. However, starting in the 1990s, China saw a rapid expansion in PhD enrollment (see the chart below). In 1995, the number of PhD students admitted in China surpassed 10,000 for the first time. By 1999, the number of PhD graduates exceeded 10,000 for the first time. By 2007, China surpassed the United States in the number of STEM PhD graduates. By 2017, China’s doctoral student admissions reached 83,878.
Between 2017 and 2023, the number of PhD students admitted in China nearly doubled, skyrocketing from 83,900 to 153,300—a staggering increase of 82.7%. In 2023 alone, 82,300 PhD students graduated. This can only be described as a “great leap forward.” Meanwhile, online discussions about the "declining quality of doctoral education" and "difficulty finding employment with a PhD" have surged.
However, when compared to the United States, China’s total number of PhDs is relatively small. Among Chinese university graduates, only about 0.8% hold PhDs, compared to approximately 6% in the U.S. In China, just over 600 people per million hold a doctoral degree, while the U.S. has long surpassed 10,000 per million. Although the U.S. graduates about 50,000 PhDs annually, complaints about an oversupply of PhDs are rare.
The stark contrast highlights the crux of the problem: the scale, structure, and quality of China’s doctoral education are poorly aligned with its socioeconomic conditions. In recent years, the CCP has heavily emphasized PhD education. In 2020, it held its first-ever National Graduate Education Conference since the regime’s founding. In 2024, the CCP’s General Office and State Council jointly issued a rare directive titled Opinions on Accelerating the High-Quality Development of Doctoral Education. However, these policies are primarily aimed at currying favor with higher-ups and are far removed from reality.
2. The CCP's doctoral education structure is imbalanced, with an overemphasis on science and engineering, making it difficult to establish a smooth cycle between research, industry, and finance, resulting in a distorted employment structure.
Historically, the CCP has been inherently anti-intellectual, once proclaiming, “The more knowledge, the more reactionary.” During the Cultural Revolution, universities were shut down, and even when reopened, only STEM programs were prioritized. Although some adjustments were made during the "Reform and Opening-Up" era, STEM has remained the dominant focus in higher education. Currently, STEM PhDs constitute the majority. For instance, in 2022, of the 82,000 doctoral graduates in China, 47,000 were in STEM fields, accounting for more than 57%. The Education Strengthening Plan further emphasizes STEM, proposing to "introduce a selection of high-quality textbooks in advanced STEM fields" and "encourage top foreign STEM universities to establish cooperative programs in China." In contrast, the humanities and social sciences receive far less attention.
China has become the world's largest producer of STEM PhDs, even surpassing the U.S., which boasts stronger economic and academic institutions. A 2021 study by Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) revealed that in 2000, U.S. universities awarded twice as many STEM PhDs as Chinese universities. By 2007, however, China had surpassed the U.S. in STEM PhD numbers. Based on current enrollment trends, China is projected to graduate more than 77,000 STEM PhDs annually by 2025, compared to about 40,000 in the U.S. Excluding international students, China’s output of STEM PhDs will exceed the U.S. by a ratio of more than 3-to-1.
The situation with Chinese students pursuing PhDs abroad also reflects this focus on STEM. For example, in 2022, of the 6,664 Chinese (including Hong Kong) students who earned doctorates in the U.S., 6,031 were in science and engineering, accounting for over 90%. Only 633 earned PhDs in non-STEM fields.
Despite graduating such a large number of STEM PhDs annually, China has yet to harness their full potential. This is due to both quality issues in doctoral training and broader problems in its educational, economic, and social systems.
For example, PhD graduates in China overwhelmingly pursue careers in academia. A study on the career paths of PhD graduates from 2015 to 2020 found that 45.55% of them ended up in higher education, followed by healthcare (16.96%) and research institutions (10.25%). Only 5% joined private companies.
In contrast, the U.S. presents a different picture. In 2002, 52% of U.S. PhD graduates entered academia, but by 2022, this figure had dropped to 33%. Meanwhile, those employed in industry doubled from 24% in 2002 to 48% in 2022.
This disparity is also reflected in patent implementation rates. According to China’s 2022 Patent Survey Report, the implementation rate of invention patents from Chinese universities was only 16.9%, with an industrialization rate of just 3.9%. In the U.S., however, university patent conversion rates exceed 50%. Many leading American universities, such as Stanford and UC Berkeley, have well-established systems for translating research into marketable products. According to Forbes, at least 35 U.S. billionaires earned their PhDs before entering the business world. This success is largely attributed to the U.S.'s advanced capital markets, which foster a virtuous cycle between research, industry, and finance, with venture capital and startups thriving in tandem.
In contrast, despite the CCP investing enormous resources in STEM doctoral education, systemic barriers within its education, economy, and society impede progress.
Conclusion
Doctoral education represents the pinnacle of a nation’s education system and serves as a crucial pillar of its innovation framework. However, in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), this is all subordinated to political objectives. The CCP’s three primary goals for its doctoral education system—building a globally significant talent hub and innovation center, achieving high-level technological self-reliance, and fully realizing socialist modernization—are not aimed at improving public welfare or national well-being. Instead, these goals are driven by the CCP’s global ambitions and its desire to compete with the United States in high-tech fields. The United States is well aware of this strategy and has been advancing its own initiatives, such as "educational decoupling," "technological decoupling," and "economic decoupling" from China.
Combined with its confrontation with the U.S., the internal contradictions of the CCP's doctoral education policies, and systemic barriers within its education, economic, and social frameworks, the CCP’s plan to leverage its vastly larger technological workforce to "overtake on a curve" or "switch lanes to overtake" and ultimately defeat the United States will ultimately prove to be nothing more than a fantasy.
(Dajiyuan)
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