Getting them home again

[photopress:Chines_students_overseas.jpg,full,alignright]Many of China‘s best and brightest go abroad for a university education and never return home to share their knowledge and expertise with China, the motherland.

A recent study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), the nation’s top think-tank, shows that China is losing more first-rate minds to the West than any other country in the world.

China tops the list for this international form of brain picking because more than 70% of the Chinese students who go abroad to study don’t return home. Other countries have the same problem but at a lesser degree.

Of the 1.06 million Chinese who have traveled overseas to study since 1978, only 275,000 have returned.

In 2005, 118,500 students left China for study abroad. By 2010, 200,000 are expected to enroll in foreign universities.

All told, according to CASS, the Chinese diaspora holds 35 million people scattered in more than 150 countries, making China the world’s largest source of emigrants.

Yang Xiaojing, one of the authors of the study, said to the China Daily, ‘This shows that Chinese students overseas, especially those with extraordinary abilities, are a real hit in the global tug-of-war for talent. While strictly controlling the inflow of foreign labor to protect the interests of their domestic workforce, most developed countries spare no effort to attract the best talent from around the world.

‘Against a backdrop of economic globalization, an excessive brain drain will inevitably threaten the human-resources security and eventually the national economic and social security of any country.’

Beijing saw the idea as students studying in the West and then bringing their expertise back to China. And, according to a 2006 United Nations report, emigration also brings US$20 billion in annual remittances to the country from Chinese living overseas.

The government is offering incentives for students and professionals to return. It does not appear to have worked desperately well.

The CASS study said, ‘Of the many reasons for the brain drain of Chinese students, huge social and economic gaps in terms of personal income, employment opportunities, working conditions, research facilities and living standards are the main ones.’ The students in the illustration, in Michigan , look singularly contented.

No doubt a Shanghai survey published this year in the Labor Daily has added to official concern. The survey showed that 36.9% of the city’s middle-school students hope to become US citizens one day.

Source: Asia Times