China now lets some engineering doctoral students earn their degree with a working product, piece of equipment, or engineering design instead of a traditional dissertation. The change is real, and it’s been building since 2024. But the viral version leaves out who actually qualifies, how many people have done it, and the fact that students still write and still defend.
What China Actually Changed
In April 2024, China’s national legislature passed a new Academic Degrees Law. It took effect on Jan. 1, 2025, and it says graduate students can apply for a degree “through a thesis defense or a defense of specified practical achievements,” as the Office of the State Council Academic Degrees Committee put it when it explained the rules.
That office followed up with national guidelines dated Sept. 18, 2024, and publicized that October. Xinhua reported they were China’s first standards for awarding a professional engineering doctorate based on practical achievements. The guidelines are officially labeled a trial version, and each university writes its own detailed rules on top of them.
So this isn’t a brand-new move from last week. It’s a two-year-old law that started producing its first graduates in the fall of 2025.
Who Qualifies
This is narrower than “engineering PhD candidates.” The route is for professional engineering doctorates, a separate track from research-focused academic PhDs. According to Xinhua, the guidelines cover eight professional degree categories, including electronic information, mechanical engineering, materials and chemicals, and energy and power. A July 2026 report on China’s state broadcaster CCTV noted that academic-degree students still have to write and defend a dissertation.
Many of the early graduates are working engineers. China launched a reform in 2022 pairing universities with major companies, and Nature reports that about 50 graduate colleges for engineers have been set up to run it. Students there get two supervisors, one academic and one from industry. At least one university, Beijing Institute of Technology, requires students to choose the practical route at the proposal stage and get it approved before they start.
What Replaces the Thesis
The national guidelines, published by the Ministry of Education, list what counts as a practical achievement:
Major equipment or specialized instruments built for real engineering projects
Other hardware, such as new materials, devices, drugs, or chemicals
Software products that are actually in use
Engineering design plans that have been carried out and verified
Official technical standards at the provincial, ministry, or national level that have been published and adopted
A cool prototype on a desk isn’t enough. The work generally has to pass review by expert peers and show that it’s actually being used. Sun Yutao, an innovation policy researcher at Dalian University of Technology, told Nature that candidates have to prove their inventions work in real life and at scale.
Yes, There’s Still Writing. And a Defense.
This is the part the viral posts skip. Under the guidelines, a practical-achievement application has to include both the physical result and a written summary report. That report covers the engineering background and the current state of the field, the design and why it’s feasible, testing and results, real-world impact, references, and supporting documents. Each university sets its own length requirement. If the project was a team effort, the student has to spell out exactly which part was theirs.
The process also runs through a feasibility review, an expert showcase and appraisal, and a final oral defense. Industry experts have to take part at each of those steps. So the thesis isn’t replaced by nothing. It’s replaced by a product, a written report, and a panel of engineers and professors asking hard questions.
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The People Who’ve Done It
The early examples show what “product instead of paper” looks like in practice:
Wei Lianfeng, Harbin Institute of Technology. A nuclear-industry engineer who went back to school as a working professional, Wei passed his defense in September 2025 on vacuum laser welding processes and the equipment to do the welding, the South China Morning Post reported. Industry experts sat on his panel.
Huang Lingcai, Northwestern Polytechnical University. The chief designer of China’s AG600 amphibious aircraft earned his doctorate in December 2025 for developing the plane’s firefighting system, according to the university and The Paper.
Zheng Hehui, Southeast University. Zheng designed Lego-like prefabricated steel reinforcement modules for giant concrete bridge towers. Nature reports they’re being used in a cable-stayed bridge across the Yangtze River. Southeast University says an expert panel reviewed the work in January 2026 and he passed his degree defense on Feb. 13.
Tsinghua, Chongqing, Xi’an Jiaotong, Nanjing, Lanzhou, and South China University of Technology have also announced first cases of their own.
How Many People, Really?
That’s dozens, not thousands. At a Ministry of Education press conference on Dec. 10, 2025, Wu Gang, who heads the ministry’s graduate education department, said 59 engineering master’s students and 3 engineering doctoral students had earned degrees this way, The Paper reported. By early February 2026, Nature counted at least 11 practical PhDs. A July 2026 Nature feature put the figure at more than 60 doctoral candidates, citing the ministry. That seems to match the ministry’s combined master’s-plus-doctoral total, so treat it with care.
The “thousands” number you may have seen refers to the bigger joint university-industry program. The ministry said nearly 26,000 engineering master’s and doctoral students have been jointly enrolled in it, and students in it can pick either a traditional thesis or the practical route. A China Daily opinion piece in August called the practical route “still small,” with a few dozen graduates compared with the roughly 97,000 PhDs China awards each year.
What It Could Mean for How We Assess Learning
If you’ve ever run a science fair, a capstone project, or a portfolio conference, this structure will look familiar. Build something real. Write up how you did it and why it works. Then stand in front of people who know the field and answer their questions. China is applying that model at the top of its education system, for a narrow group of engineers.
It’s worth being clear about the limits. The route is tied to national priorities like semiconductors and advanced manufacturing, and Nature and the SCMP both note that some participating universities have close links to defense work. The China Daily piece also said it “remains to be seen” how the approach carries over to fields closer to basic research. And as Nature points out, many “industrial PhDs” in other countries still require a written thesis.
For those of us grading projects this week, it’s still an interesting data point. One of the biggest education systems in the world has decided that for some students, a working bridge part, backed by a written report and a tough defense, can count as proof of mastery.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can any PhD student in China skip the dissertation now?
No. The option is for professional engineering doctorates in eight engineering categories, not research-focused academic PhDs, and universities approve it case by case.
Do these students write anything at all?
Yes. The national guidelines require a written summary report alongside the product or design, plus an oral defense with industry experts on the panel.
Where did the “100-page thesis” line come from?
It isn’t in any official rule we found. A November 2025 SCMP article used “defending a 100-page thesis” as a figure of speech, and later viral posts repeated it.