Alice Han

I believe China may be more meritocratic today than America is.

Given this system, given the way in which education and scholastic intelligence are lionized, I would say that China today is probably more meritocratic than the U.S.

Welcome to China Decode, I'm Alice Han.

In today's episode of China Decode, we're discussing digging inside China's genius pipeline, Trump accusing China of secret nuclear testing, plus the revival of China's underground club scene and Bad Bunny topping the charts in China.

That's all coming up, but first, let's do a quick check-in with how the Chinese markets are starting the week.

On Monday, the Shanghai A-share index and the Hang Seng H-share index closed up 1.4% and 1.8% respectively, as investors shipped back to risk-on mode after last week's sell-off.

Potmart, the company behind the Labubu, rallied about 6% on news of strong growth expectations and expansion overseas.

And tech giants Alibaba and Tencent both closed up over 2%.

How are you feeling, James?

I know it sucks to be sick.

kind of getting there sorry about this my voice is not great but you still got the voice for radio all right let's get right into it there's been a viral narrative floating around about china running some shadowy all-powerful genius factory but the reality is both less conspiratorial and way more interesting china isn't mass producing prodigies it's running a small brutally selective pipeline that spots extreme talent early and pushes it fast

And a surprising number of the people behind China's biggest tech and AI companies and breakthroughs came through these genius programs.

James, you've lived in China for many years.

I'm sure you've met people who have been in these genius camps that can tell us a little bit about what it was like on the ground.

I love the way that you've described that story.

And to some extent, I think a lot of Western countries could benefit from that.

It seems like we're facing a culture of anti-intellectualism.

I don't think that kind of kid would be given a dumpling in, say, America.

I personally didn't grow up in China and my cousins, none of them got into these genius classes.

But I know friends of friends who did.