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Comment by cavisne | Hacker News Reader

“40% move to China”

This is the plan not a coincidence. China pays huge “grants” to their citizens to come to the US, get educated, work in big tech/science, then bring it all home.

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Probably almost 40% of them came from China in the first place, because China has almost 40% of the candidates who are accepted to US grad programs in the first place. And, even without any grants, returning to China probably seems a lot more appealing than returning to Nigeria, Paraguay, or Bangladesh, whose acceptance rates are already handicapped by the much lower quality of undergraduate education available there.

The US could retain a lot of that talent if it put the same level of funding into science that China is, and remained welcoming to foreign nationals. The US has been brain-draining the rest of the world for decades with enormous benefits to us. We then led in most fields and the flywheel kept spinning. Now we are cutting research spending and closing the door, while China continues to increase its science funding year over year. The sclaes are tipping and talent will be drawn to the leading edge, wherever that is.

Perhaps, be anecdotally I've seen a significant shift in students from China in Canada and the US over the last couple of decades. It used to be that pretty much if someone can stay post graduation they will. Now many are choosing to go back to China, even if the opportunity to stay is there. This isn't just US policy, but also just the development of China. There are just a lot more opportunities there than there was 20 years ago.

Seems like chicken and the egg problem:

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/discrimination-chine...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg78xng04xo

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/admissions/graduate/2025...

https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-congress-conside...

There might be a plan but more likely Chinese salaries have grown a lot in the last 20 years. 20 years ago US salaries were much higher - it makes sense to get a US degree and work here. Now you might as well go home again, it isn't better to be in the US any more.

Thousand talent tier incentive is drop in the bucket, most sea turtles return because only so high you can climb in US with cold war bamboo ceiling. Past certain point, both US PRC can cut big checks, PRC lets a yellow face climb to top.

Maybe in the defense industry. Elsewhere? Nah.

South Asian (Indian) / White / East Asian ceo gap something like 3 / 2 / 0.5 per million pop in US. Chinese long recognized this ceiling, and more are returning to PRC because of it. More and more, PRC getting Chinese returnees that are credentialled 40yro stuck at manager / director level who see greener PRC grass leaving after accumulating industry knowledge / experience taking their entire network / ip / tacit knowledge with them. PRC use to pay a lot of recruit these folks, but we're at that point a lot of Chinese Americans from 80s-90s are in their 30s-40s, who know how high they can climb in US. Meanwhile PRC printing highend jobs that attract Chinese talent with comparable compensation, and a better title / social status.

CEO gap mostly goes away when controlling for pop. age / cultural differences (less assertive), not nebulous racism like first comment. PRC still pays a lot to recruit through 1000 talents, USDOJ continues to uncover cases where $X00,000+ offered for IP / research. Meanwhile Chinese (m|b)illionaires make exit plans in case they get Jack Ma’d or worse.

Yes, yes and Asian tertiary applicants has worse personality except not. Eitherway, I didn't bring up racism. I said Chinese want leadership positions, they're not getting it vs the usual other races in US, so some go where they can get it, which happens to be increasingly PRC.

X00,000 USD is... not a lot anymore. That's normal compensation for high tier jobs, aka PRC tier1 opportunities is simply default globally competitive especially when you factor in other allowances. Top tier 1000 talent tier inducements where PRC build you a lab, give 7 digit in guaranteed funding, aka exactly the kind of opportunities bamboo ceiling is cutting off in US is pretty rare, almost rounding error in overall flow of talent. NVM DoJ has prosecuted ~0/150 thousand talent cases for actual espionage, i.e. never uncovered anything but candidates double dipping on PRC and NIH/NSF grants.

I don't know what billionaires capita flighting fraction of their liquidity has to do with anything. Ultimately whats more damaging for geopolitical S&T competition, capital flight, or knowledge flight.

If this is true (I doubt it happens at scale), then the US got to benefit from some severely underpaid labor for a couple years at no cost to the taxpayer. What's there not to like?

It happens at scale. UK universities are also heavily subsidised by Chinese students. I also, where I am, I don't really see these students working in part-time jobs to pay the bills.

I assume the underpaid labor they were talking about was the PhD.

PhDs get paid though?

Well that’s a very misleading thing. If the US immigration policy wasn’t this hostile to populous countries, more Chinese will want to stay.

When are people going to drop the immigration is good at all costs assumption.

We need a well managed set of immigration polices or country WILL take advantage of US. These are our military rivals and we sell our most advanced math, physics and engineering seats to the highest bidder. It’s a self districting disaster and it’s not just on us to treat people better.

Look at the rate of Indian asylum seekers in Canada to see the most extreme case. It happens anywhere you extend naivety and boundless good will.

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