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Comment by tomohelix | Hacker News Reader

The US is losing it. If you do not consider a 5-folds increase in the number of Chinese scientists leaving the US an issue worth addressing, then that is just ignoring the problem.

The US had it very good in the past. And that helped it retain its top spot. But it also means once you are at the top, if you don't keep going up at the same rate as others, you are going down. And trends of losing steam can sometimes get swept under the rug because of "we are number one" sentiment.

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It could of course also be that the five fold increase is because China itself is becoming more competitive. I'd be a lot more worried if there was a five fold increase of American scientists leaving for China and sending their children there to study. But that does not seem to be happening. American universities are still quite prestigious, also inside China. Depending on the field Chinese universities can be quite prestigious as well, but given the choice of studying in the United States or China many people from other countries would given equal opportunity still choose the United States.

It is true that US immigration is horrible, but that goes for may other countries as well. I don't know what the cause is or whether it is something that you should even want to repair.

Rome wasn't built in a single day. Trends start way before the final line is crossed. You can address them early or let it be and hope it goes away by itself.

If you waited until the day when Americans have to go to China for an education, then the US is longer in a position to deal with the problem as effectively as when it just started losing foreign-born scientists.

The US was built by immigrants. That is the root of its power, a gathering place for talents all over the world. If you still question whether it is of any concern for immigrants, especially high-skilled ones, to feel unwelcomed here, then I afraid I have no arguments that can sway you.

The US has green card quotas per country of origin. So for particularly high demand countries like India, the waiting list is now 9+ years long.

It does start to happen in other countries, not so much in Europe, but students are starting to be sent to China to study. And Chinese universities are competing for international students. Language barriers is what really prevents it from happening at scale.

From where are students being sent to study in China?

Pakistan and various African countries.

You get a lot of Koreans, Thai, and Africans of all sorts in Chinese universities. Still not very common, but you will run into them at Chinese universities. It always isn’t language related, my wife knew of Korean art students at the Chinese art university she attended in Beijing.

> It could of course also be that the five fold increase is because China itself is becoming more competitive

it is a competition, so it doesn't matter if it was china getting better, or the US becoming worse. The end result is the same.

This discussion is only centered around China, when these scientists are also leaving for other countries (per the article, about half of them don't return to China)

To your point, yes US residents send their kids abroad. From a total of 15k in 2000, up to 34k right before the pandemic.

https://opendoorsdata.org/data/us-study-abroad/all-destinati...

> And trends of losing steam can sometimes get swept under the rug because of "we are number one" sentiment.

Americans definitely don’t care as much about face as the Chinese do, so it really isn’t that big of a deal. China’s economy was eventually going to stem its emigration, and a lot of rich Chinese send their kids to school the states now with the expectation that they will come back, not as a hedge against the Chinese internal problems.

China could do better with immigration. Like, if you think American immigration is bad, China is worse, permanent residency wasn’t even a thing for non-Chinese until a few years ago, and is still quite rare.

American exceptionalism is a very strong sentiment. It isn't about face. It is about believing one is the best and act with that assumption, e.g. nationalism.

"Face" is a concept about preserving personal honor and appearance regardless of what they actually believe. Slightly different but quite distinct imo.

Nationalism is much heavier in the PRC than in the states, you can see it whenever they put on a military parade that you need a special invite to see in person. It has been intertwined with face in china for around 20 years now, or at least ever since the 2008 Olympics.

> Nationalism is much heavier in the PRC than in the states

You decide between you two who's the kettle and who's the pot. We'll be minding or own business in the meantime.

Just try living in China for a few years and tell me that mainland Chinese aren’t more nationalistic than the USA. Wolf warriors aren’t just a movie meme these days, Nationalism is full on promoted and basically required by the state not everyone is just paying it lip service.

You're back to arguing whether China or the US should receive the nationalistic medal. The discussion should be on why both are so nationalistic in the first place and how to get out of that.

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