BEIJING - At the retirement age of 64, Zhu Qingshi was handpicked by the Shenzhen government to organize a new education model to better tap the research and innovation potential of young Chinese.

"I've been thinking hard over the past year on where and how we go," says Zhu.

He looked to the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and recalled his visits as either a guest scientist or researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brookhaven National Laboratory in the United States, Cambridge and Oxford universities in Britain, the National Research Council of Canada and the University of Paris.