China trains more AI researchers and workers than anyone. It needs 5 million more

China produces more top AI researchers than any country in the world. A large share of them work in Silicon Valley. A few figures showcase what’s going on with the country’s AI tech talent. ManpowerGroup puts China among the lowest talent shortages on Earth, at 48%, below the global average for AI vacancies per qualified candidate. McKinsey says China will be short 5 million AI workers by 2030, a figure it revised up from 4 million. ByteDance's offer to top fresh hires went from 1.5 million yuan in 2024 to 3–5 million yuan in 2025, then to 6 million yuan this year. That’s doubling annually to hit the current $900,000. Tianchen Xu, senior economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit in Beijing, explains this phenomenon. His argument is that China has two separate labour markets that are often viewed as one. There is the frontier—people who can train models, improve algorithms, and design large-scale systems—where the pool is tiny and the pay is a superstar auction. Below that, there is the diffusion layer, which is formed by millions of engineers who deploy and integrate AI across manufacturing, finance, healthcare, logistics, and other sectors. The second group is where there is a shortfall of 5 million, while the land grab for talent is entirely in the first. Tianchen also shows us what one of China’s AI academies actually looks like from the inside, why Tencent handed its chief AI scientist role to a 27-year-old, why 500 Chinese universities launching AI majors is mostly not a good sign, why Tencent is running camps for high schoolers, and more. Tianchen was ranked the most accurate forecaster on China in the world at the FocusEconomics 2026 Accuracy Awards. — This episode was hosted and produced by Brady Ng. — Zeus, the mascot of *Zero Shot*, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by *The Ken*. — Write to us at zeroshot@the-ken.com.