It"s a problem that vexes some of China"s brightest minds: why is China so far behind the world in math? After all, this is a country with a long intellectual tradition, one that invented the abacus and may have come up with the Pythagorean theorem before it dawned on Pythagoras. (46) Sure, Chinese high-school students consistently dazzle the world with sky-high standardized-test scores and gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad. But high school seems to be where they peak. Only one Chinese-born mathematician has won the Fields Medal, the Nobel Prize of math, in its 70-year history. And that man, Yau Shingtung, is among those most worried. (47) Now a professor at Harvard, he was stunned after recently interviewing a faculty candidate at a prominent Chinese university. "A student at that level, I wouldn"t even give a master"s degree," he said. "I"m not pessimistic, but the problems are there." Many of China"s leading minds believe the problem rests in the country"s competitive, test-driven education system. (48) Primary and Secondary schools stress rote memorization, and they can be brutally unforgiving of creative mavericks—one bad test early in life can ruin a student"s chances for college. At the doctoral level, this has resulted in low-risk, derivative research. Chinese universities simply tally the number of papers someone has published when it comes time to decide promotions. The result is that many Christians scholars publish more mediocre papers and less groundbreaking work. Many of the greatest innovations come from people in laboratories doing pure research. Sure, a country full of high-school-math whizzes can offer the world millions of qualified computer programmers. (49) But if China truly wants to become a high-tech player, then its students must be able to create cutting-edge technology—not simply serve it. China"s mathematicians may still be able to solve for these variables. People are fighting to change the rules for promoting professors. At some academy, for example, the three-person evaluation panels now must include two overseas experts. (50) Perhaps even more promising, Chinese universities are going beyond the elite city colleges and into the impoverished countryside in search of future Chinese Newtons and Nashes. Harvard"s Yau helped establish a mathematics institute in Hong Kong where, he says, some of the students producing the most creative work are the ones from the countryside or the poorest mainland schools.