Movement of Global Talent

First paper:  "The Mobility of Chinese Human Capital:  The View from the United States", by David Zweig.

America has been a magnet for educated Chinese.  universities have rewarded human talent and drawn chinese out especially since 1970s.  (PP slide showing China as largest group of overseas students).  31% of Chinese have stayed on as post-docs.  31% of indians stay and open own company.

Many of scientists who go back to China are post-docs, not fullfledged researchers.  Number of people with firm plans to stay... numbers are increasing, especially with returnees to China.  35,000 returnees, at least half of which have one-year masters degree and having trouble finding work back in China.

(sorry, lost some of the entry because of blog malfunction...)

41% of mainland Chinese who answered survey had no contact with mainland. 

3 sets of data: saxenian survey, plus 2 Zweig surveys of returnee well educated chinese.

3rd data set.  100 entrepreneurs returned to china after living abroad. 

3 hypotheses:

1. given extent of trade, should be playing active role

2. given exchange of tech, these people should be involved

3. quality of american education... does that make them better when get back to china?

ROW - returnees from rest of world

RUS - returness from u.s.

ROW more involved in trade than RUS.  people who come back from U.S. tend to target domestic market.  not to use China as export platform. RUS more inclined to say they learned some skills that would enhance their role in china. RUS saw selves as doing better in their sector than returnees from the rest of the world.  Sales increased, (average stay in U.S. longer, and may have better knowledge of the field)

Conclusions:  many years ago, fear was brain drain.  now talking about brain circulation. 

Question is:  is the U.S. benefitting from this circulation?  Clearly returnees from U.S. have benefitted.  Mainlanders with firms in U.S. have mastered a technology, transferred back to China.  For China this is a big advantage.  The challenge to America is how to capture the advantage.