China has so many problems including a poor educational system. There are village youths who manage to get sufficient education to become citizen of the cities but they are real exceptions.
Their university systems are controlled by party members. Not all professors are party members but the party members get special goodies.
When I was invited to present a seminar on my political economy work to students at the School of Law of Beijing University (the elite school of that sort) I paid my airfare. All they did is put me up in their crummy campus hotel. My host paid for the meals and I often ate with his graduate students, which I enjoyed very much.
But they pay the airfare for biz school professors from even second rate biz schools to come a present their worthless theories about management.
The military does secretly sponsor scientific seminars so as to attract foreign experts whom they want to spy on. But the profits that the military gangs get from export industries divert their attention from serious military technological advancement. Yes they are getting stronger but the internal tensions in the country between the city elites and the peasants worry the party bosses.
China is not homogeneous as the Han Chinese would like us to believe and same holds from the KMTnick in Taiwan. Chinese people have different cultures and different looks but one has to notice the differences.