Funding for mathematics projects is a big issue indeed.
The projects themselves don't incur many additional costs. Most of the expense reimbursements for mathematics projects are for participating in academic conferences, subscribing to specialized math journals, and so on. As a result, it's challenging to request high funding.
Nevertheless, only getting a grant of twenty thousand made Zhou Li quite upset. His research on partial differential equations was amongst the top rated nationwide and even had some fame globally.
So does it mean his area of study only worth twenty thousand?
As for Zhao Yi...
Fermat's Last Theorem?
Fermat's Last Theorem certainly is an impressive project — not just for general scholars, but there are probably only a few people in the country who could get this project approved. Yet, Zhao Yi managed to obtain a million in funding.
A million in funding, for what?