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According to statistics from the U.S. National Science Foundation, over the past 25 years, Chinese are among the top foreign recipients of doctoral degrees in science and engineering from American universities. However, almost all of these Ph.D.s clearly indicated their intention to remain in the United States once they receive their degrees; and in fact, most of them have managed to stay.
More problematic is the fact that China has also witnessed an exodus of its best graduates in recent years. For example, in 2006, Qinghua University and Beijing University were the two largest baccalaureate-origin institutions of U.S. science and engineering doctorates, surpassing the University of California, Berkeley.
As a result, in 2003, 62,500 Chinese science and engineering doctorates – more than three-quarters receiving their degrees in the United States – were in the American science and engineering workforce, the largest number among foreign-born U.S. residents with those degrees.
And although most of the awardees in the government-sanctioned programs – the National Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholars, the Cheung Kong Scholars Program and the One Hundred Talent Program, among others – have foreign experience, only one-third to one-half of them received their doctorates from abroad. If such high-profile programs with significant incentives and backed by enormous resources have thus far failed to attract more high-quality talent at home, it can hardly be claimed that the effort to turn around the “brain drain” has been successful.
In general, besides taking several years to set up a laboratory, form a team, recruit students, apply and get grants, and start the research, returned academics would also have to adapt and adjust to a “different” research environment and be involved in various activities unimaginable if they were abroad. In some cases, they might not even survive, because they just do not know the rules of the game played in China – there may be no rules at all in dealing with misconduct in science, for example – and they have no one to turn to for help since they do not have guanxi, or a network of relationships.
From the perspective of career development, the opportunity cost for the best and the brightest scientists to work in China is just too high: low efficiency, personal conflict and loss of close contacts with the international scientific community. As such, scientists still on their upward mobility curves would most likely prefer not to return if they can find opportunities abroad. Some might also not bother to work in China even on a temporary basis; of course, there are institutional barriers for them to do so out of the intellectual property right concern. Instead, they would rather wait until they have established themselves abroad.
Nevertheless, this does not necessarily mean that first-rate Chinese researchers do not want to return. Some scientists have expressed the wish to return permanently to China while they are still most active academically and are able to demonstrate that it is possible to do first-rate science in China.
Recent significant returnees include Yi Rao, who quit his chair professorship at Northwestern University in the United States to become the dean of life sciences at Beijing University, and Yigong Shi, who left his chair professorship at Princeton University for a leading position at Qinghua University. However, China's ability to reverse the “brain drain” depends on whether it can provide or develop a good research environment, which is easier said than done.
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(Cong Cao is a senior research associate with the Neil D. Levin Graduate Institute of International Relations and Commerce at the State University of New York. He received his PhD in sociology from Columbia University in 1997 and has worked at the University of Oregon and the National University of Singapore. Dr. Cao is interested in the social studies of science and technology with a focus on China. ©Copyright Cong Cao.)
