The &quot;motivation&quot; should come from a genuine curiosity and interest in making the world a better place. Academia, even western academia, is often motivated by securing more funding so they can....secure more funding. That creates a closed loop that serves no one outside of it.<p>The US News report just shows who is better at gaming the system. Heck, even MIT has its problems, though you&#x27;ll find more pockets of genuine interest and capabilities. Tsinghua also has a lot of great researchers, but usually this is inspite of, not because of, the games played to optimize for these metrics.