Clearly the solution to prevent them from taking their knowledge back to their home countries is to denigrate them politically and make it harder and more inconvenient for them to live and work here.
They’re not stupid, they look at China and see an economy growing at 6-9% a year while the US is stuck at 1-2% and they know where the growth is for the medium-term. They also see a mature American economy that can be tough to crack even for native white citizens, so its not hard to see how their chances of long-term success are much higher in China than in the US.
"U.S. GDP could top 4% in 2nd quarter, economists say"
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-gdp-could-top-4-in-2nd-...
"Baotou in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region revised its estimated fiscal revenue in 2017 lower by nearly 50% in an annual work report"
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-data/anothe...
"China fake data mask economic rebound"
https://www.ft.com/content/a9889330-f51c-11e7-88f7-5465a6ce1...
Also weighing heavily on people are family and cultural conflict issues. But anecdotally I can say that the majority of Chinese students don’t want to stay in the US for a variety of reasons; and that many feel their prospects are at least as good in China as the US.
The more tradition Chinese students who have been coming here since the 1980s (and don’t have very rich parents) mostly pick STEM majors. On graduating, they would rather work for Google in Mountain View than Tencent in Shenzhen.
I'm afraid you're making assumptions here.
America is not where opportunity is these days, especially in the hardware manufacturing sector.
Yes, but the living standards in the United States are far higher. Sure you may never become a billionaire here like you can in China, but you can breathe the air and the traffic isn't that bad. The schools are better, the houses are bigger. China may get there, but I know where I'd rather be over the next 20-30 years. And they can always move back.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/climate/trump...
You heard of the (infamous) Gaokao? It's gruelling, and necessitates nothing but continuous study day in and day out to get into a decent Chinese university.
If they could, a lot of Chinese would prefer to study in the US (or any other western country for that matter).
Yeah, I think US living standards are higher for now. But I can totally see China seeing parity in less than 20 years. For one thing, they have made large strides in infrastructure investment, and for another thing, they've been realizing and acting on their need to clean up their environmental act over the last few years.
At the undergrad and graduate level, perhaps, and as another poster commented, probably not for very long.
But for the school years before undergrad, I'm sorry to say, America is in a very bad way.
I don't know how it compares to China, but American public primary and secondary school is definitely not where I'd have my children receive an education
That's the old trade-off, and how America got the worlds' talent. But as lives in home countries get better, US would have to do more to make those immigrants feel like home. Or that trade-off would slowly stop making sense, and more people will go back to their home countries. This is not just happening with the Chinese.
For now.