英伟达首席执行官黄仁勋最近在讨论AI时警告，美国“完全可能落后于中国”，其核心理由从资本和算力转向更关键的人才赛道。数据显示中国正在持续扩张人才主导权：在2025年NeurIPS上，以中国起步的作者占51%，而2019年仅29%；同期美国作者占比从约20%降到12%。
中国在顶会主导权上首次超过美国和欧洲（以第一作者计），且2025年投稿论文作者本科学历前十机构中有九个在中国，其中清华大学占4%，MIT仅占1%。同样值得注意的是，在隶属于美国机构的作者中，约35%拥有中国本科学历，与美国本科学历人数持平，说明美国顶尖AI研究对华裔人才依赖度已显著提高。 在中国，活跃AI研究者规模已超过美国、英国和欧洲总和，且结构更年轻：有47%是学生，而西方约30%；约40%的中国大学生学STM（约为美国人数的两倍）。中国科研人才留存显著上升，本科出身留在国内的比例从2019年的约三分之一升至2022年的58%，再到2025年的68%，并且有海外读研后回国比例从12%升到28%；与此同时，2019年在美的中国NeurIPS作者中，2025年仍留在美国的比例仍有87%。
尽管如此，高端人才流向仍在改变：以NeurIPS作者计，约37%顶级AI研究者在中国机构，32%在美国机构，且按既有趋势到2028年中国机构研究者可能达到美国的2倍。美国仍具吸引力（更多国际人才聚集于美），但其吸引力正在被削弱：签证不确定、资金紧缩与疑虑环境推高流失，而中国则以“起明计划”等回流激励（700,000元人民币以上年薪、研究经费与住房支持）形成吸引。
Jensen Huang of Nvidia has warned that the U.S. could fall behind China in AI, shifting the battleground from compute and capital to talent. The numbers now show a clear move: in NeurIPS 2025, 51% of authors began in China versus 29% in 2019, while the U.S. share fell from about 20% to 12%.
China has surpassed the U.S. and Europe in lead authorship at top AI conferences in 2025, with nine of the top ten undergraduate institutions of the sampled authors in China; Tsinghua contributed 4% of them, compared with MIT at 1%. Among authors affiliated with U.S. institutions, roughly 35% have Chinese undergraduate degrees—about the same as those with U.S. degrees—while China now has more active AI researchers than America, Britain, and Europe combined, with 47% students versus about 30% in the West and about two-fifths of Chinese university students in STEM, roughly double the U.S. share.
China is also retaining and reclaiming talent: stay-at-home rates for Chinese-undergrad NeurIPS authors rose from about one-third in 2019 to 58% in 2022 and 68% in 2025, and returnees with foreign graduate degrees rose from 12% to 28%. By these author-based metrics, about 37% of top AI researchers now work in Chinese organizations versus 32% in U.S. ones; if decade-long trends continue, China-based top researchers could outnumber U.S.-based ones two to one by 2028, even as the U.S. still keeps 87% of China-born 2019 NeurIPS authors by 2025.
Source: China is winning the AI talent race
Subtitle: Its lead over the West is only set to wide
Dateline: 3月 26, 2026 05:35 上午