Comment by jaqalopes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jaqalopes | Hacker News Reader

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This data is certainly stark, but I don’t see how it follows from test scores in Michigan that China is going to do something or other regarding STEM. I guess the core assumption here is that Asian students in America are a proxy for Chinese students in China? As someone who works exclusively with Chinese high schoolers as a college application coach, I find this hard to believe. The thing that Asians very definitely do differently than other groups is parenting. Chinese parents in particular take their kids’ phones away at night. They helicopter over their homework until it’s done. Dating, parties, and many enrichment activities that are part of a “normal” high school experience are usually (not always—nothing is absolute!) off the table. This isn’t genetic, it’s cultural. And it becomes especially obvious once you separate out recent Asian immigrants from longer-term Asian Americans.

To zoom out a bit, I don’t think this post even asks the right question. Why does quantity of STEM major matter, as opposed to quality? The USA is home to the vast majority of leading universities, and no amount of PISA score dominance by Chinese children can change that. If anything, China should be worried about the continuous brain drain of their best, brightest, and most of all wealthiest to Canada and the USA. Not to take anything away from the hard work and ambition of those Chinese people who wish to stay in China, but I just don’t agree that this difference in test scores taken by public high school students is any sort of leading indicator of shifting geopolitical trends.

> The USA is home to the vast majority of leading universities, and no amount of PISA score dominance by Chinese children can change that.

Those leadership placements are measured primarily by academic standards, and particularly research output. In CS, over 60% of PhD students -- the food soldiers of academia -- are here on student visas. Another huge fraction are first gen residents/citizens. I'd guess fewer than 20% of CS PhD students in the US are > 1st gen. Again, those are the people doing the actual work.

> If anything, China should be worried about the continuous brain drain of their best, brightest, and most of all wealthiest to Canada and the USA.

If we get to the point where the USA depends on Chinese out migration in order to compete economically or militarily with China, China may well choose to turn off the spigot. We should welcome immigration but also need home grown talent.

There's also a serious moral issue with the "depend on immigration" path -- we owe it to our citizens to provide them with opportunities.

> If we get to the point where the USA depends on Chinese out migration in order to compete economically or militarily with China, China may well choose to turn off the spigot.

America's biggest advantage over other nations is our immigration system, regardless of the myriad issues it has. The best and brightest are born all over the world, and they immigrate to America. Even if China stops immigration, we still have the other 6/7ths of the world to pull from.

Our immigration system is our biggest advantage? Are you sure it's not the thing(s) that makes people want to immigrate here that is our biggest advantage?

Anyone willing to leave their home country is almost always guaranteed to be a hard worker. It’s why immigrants are disproportionately successful compared to natives. Anyone who isn’t already a hard worker will not bother immigrating.

That doesn't explain why they choose the US in such large numbers though. If this is the best and the brightest they could go be just as successful anywhere else too. So why is the US such a magnet?

Cause US is the largest and the most superior on so many indices economicaly, sometimes providing the only top notch opportunities in the whole world (e.g., advanced high-tech). However, lots of hard working people from poorer or less developed parts of the world immigrate to countries other than the US in large numbers (legally, for education and skilled work). Most people in African countries (North Africa in particular, but also subsaharan, with the exception of South Africa) immigrate to Europe, namely France, Germany and Sweden. And immigration is just as successful as in the US (there are lately immigration issues in Europe, but it's a different type of immigration, refugees and asylum seekers, caused by destabilised regions in the middle east. I'm talking about regular immigration for education and skileld work).

You can't separate those things. Immigrants create conditions (prosperity) that make people want to immigrate.

Is that a logical conclusion? Seems like other countries would do the same if it were that simple.

Simple does not mean easy. It is hard to become a country that attracts the brightest immigrants in the world.

Isn't yours a recursive argument then? You say immigrants are what makes it attractive to immigrate here.

It's a positive feedback loop.

Getting one started usually isn't a conscious policy choice. You have relatively better conditions to start with (no war, good location with stable climate, good civic institutions, limited immigration restrictions) which kicks off the virtuous cycle.

Here's an example. The Irish famine led to Irish emigration down the road, which benefited the US and Australia. This wasn't a policy choice of the receiving countries. It was mostly luck. These kind of relative differences in liveability between the two countries (US > Ireland) leads to a positive feedback loop in the US.

>6/7ths of the world to pull from.

Realistically US draws from ~1.2B of English speakers. PRC draws from ~1.1B of Mandarin speakers. Actually pool of relevant STEM talent is obviously much smaller, but PRC generates about as much as all OECD countries combined, which is multiple times US can absorb via immigration unless (unpopular) shift in policy. PRC academic / S&T / R&D pipeline is maturing towards generating "best and brightest" in numbers comparable to rest 6/7th of the world, much of whom are already retained in PRC. And despite how many Chinese foreign students are in western universities, this isn't the 90s anymore where CCP actually sent out their best and brightest to learn abroad, most of the international PRC students now are those who can't hack it in high competitive PRC system but have the wealth to pursue education abroad. They're extremely competitive bench warmers. Which isn't to say US brain drain isn't a great competitive advantage, it just may not be disproportionately so, something that keeps US in the game instead of thoroughly dominating it.

I think it’s currently pretty hard for these people to stay in the US after getting their phds. I think immigration rates still haven’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels. I think immigration is just not popular with the American voters at the moment.

But it seems obviously bad if someone goes from China to the US for a phd in some critical field and wants to stay in the US (either for better opportunities or for the relationships they have developed or because they like living in a free country) but is forced to return to China by the US immigration system. Maybe phd students in stem in the US also bias foreign because there are just more non-Americans than Americans in the world or because American citizenship allows natives access to better opportunities (eg getting paid a lot more money in tech or just having a job where you get some level of support from your superiors).

I appreciate this extra insight on the PhD situation and generally agree with your points. I don’t necessarily agree that we (Americans) should worry about those figures. If you believe talent is more or less equally distributed worldwide, and that grad school attendance is at least partly meritocratic, it should be the case that most grad students in all fields come from elsewhere, since most humans live outside the USA.

I do agree strongly that we need opportunities for home grown talent. On the other hand, just because an American is born in the capital of the world economy should not place upon them the burden of rising to become one of its leaders. Not everyone is cut out for that, and that’s okay. As for depending on immigration, almost no American today is descended from the “original” Americans (the white ones that is), and we seem to be doing okay. Obviously past performance doesn’t guaranteed future returns, but I find reason for hope in that fact.

>If we get to the point where the USA depends on Chinese out migration in order to compete economically or militarily with China, China may well choose to turn off the spigot. We should welcome immigration but also need home grown talent.

You're massively overselling the impact of academics. Although they are important, the other machineries of society are more so.

There's no reason to think that these same students would excel or contribute as much at home.

I do somewhat agree with the latter. I think foreign students are more aggressive to meet criteria to get into PhD programs and to slave away for advisors because they have far fewer options than native students.

The Chinese may outnumber the Indians in the US but Indians are also included in the “Asian” number and make a significant percentage so it’s definitely not purely genetic.

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