The average Chinese is just as clever, if not more clever, than the average Westerner. They'll absolutely produce good results given good funding. But the tradition of the University is not Chinese; the Areopagitica is alien to mainstream Chinese civic and intellectual values; the inviolability of the right to interrogate the universe as a free, searching, essentially individual being is not part of the mentality driving all this investment. It is essentially like 20th century Soviet enthusiasm for science and mathematics. The government expects the benefits of a world class intelligentsia with the downsides held in check at the point of a rifle.

I think the US and Europe should slam the (academic) doors shut; no more collaboration until the Chinese government learns some basic humanity. The strategy of influencing the Chinese by educating their elite has not worked. Clearly.