China provides many opportunities for its citizens to study abroad and expand their horizons, and the US is happy to take that money and nearly free brain labor. But when the fruits of all that training is ripe to pluck, the scale flips and now it is a fight between those two countries to retain the talents. And the US is losing badly.
Maybe China is playing it dirty and forces these scientists to come back. Or maybe it is simply that the US immigration is so hostile they don't see a future here. One of the main reasons people tried to go here is because of a chance of a better life. But when the naturalization process is so grueling and drawn out, they just don't bother anymore. Especially when China in big cities is providing pretty high standards of living to its citizens. Sure, "freedom" and "human rights" are something but frankly, those concerns are not relevant when we are talking about the upper class Han people. Stereotypes of rich Asian international students exist for a reason and that is because many of them come from rich and influential families. To these people, as long as you don't stir things up politically, they will feel safer and enjoy more rights in China than in the US.
Lots of US citizens do not understand the pain of immigration. It is in every way a demeaning and torturous process. You get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with. There must be an incentive for these people to endure that kind of process. And for many Chinese whose homeland in every way a direct competitor to the US, there aren't enough reasons.
Odd to frame it that we're losing badly because /some/ Chinese scientists are going back to China but tons of them are still staying here, and the reverse is simply not happening at any scale.
If you want to see America in decline, you'll see it everywhere you look.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
yeah. for a few years, but especially recently, every time I re-enter the USA, I cannot help but think, for a long time, how it feels like such decline is so visible everywhere.
It feels quite dispiriting. I'm not sure I'd go to china as my first choice, especially as I don't speak mandarin or cantonese, but I'd _love_ to leave the USA. There's many great options I'd consider. Maybe in a year or two, I'll be hailing from outside the USA!
Losing badly against the status quo. The trend is in the wrong direction, even though in absolute numbers the US is still winning the talent war. But not if it keeps changing this way.
Immigration is no small feat and when the US govt throws suspicions at immigrants and makes their life difficult, it becomes an easy choice to call it quit, admit defeat and just go back to a known quantity where you'll be treated better.
I bet you if the US attitude was opposite, the vast majority of these folks wouldn't go back.
Hard to say, PRC generating ~5M STEM per year which is multiple times more than US can generate via domestic education and brain drain. That's the skilled human capita gap where US is losing hard, PRC adding conservatively more than 5x more STEM talent per year, set to pass US total STEM workforce of 35M within next few years (PRC STEM @ ~20M as of 2020), and medium term (2050) PRC on trend have 50-100M STEM. It's not so much US decline as PRC ascend and relative gap massively swinging in PRC favour well past 2050s. Now factor in indigenous PRC academic and S&T industries have increasingly more opportunties retaining more and more tier1 PRC talent, the fact that best PRC talent don't flood into west anymore - this isn't the 00s where PRC best was sent abroad as state policy or natural outflow due to lack of domestic opportunities. Even international students are now mostly B tier talents that couldn't hack it in PRC gaokao but had wealthy enough families to send them abroad. TLDR US can't compete on generating talent vs PRC massive population base effect + human capital production via academic reforms coming to fruition, and US brain drain of PRC talent (itself reducing due to geopolitics as mentioned in this article) can no longer meaningfully inhibit PRC talent pipeline.
PRC generates STEM talent, most but not all stays in the PRC. Meanwhile, people come from all over the world to do STEM in the USA. So ya, Tsinghua and PKU are still, in 2023, are providers of STEM talent in America. And even if China decided to close off emigration tomorrow, we still have India and Europe, it isn't going to make it win as much, especially with the its own demographic bomb ticking (they will need to import talent as well in the next 50 years).
Before China's hardcore response the pandemic scared a bunch of people into emigrating, you might have had a point. We will see now that China is opening up again if it goes back to the trend it had in 2019 or not.
Most of PRC talent now stays in the PRC because they generate significantly more than west can brain drain or there is emmigration opportunities. The amount of top C9 candidates flowing to the west is decreasing with each year because indigenous ecosystem has good opportunities for them unlike 10-20 years ago. It's not India/IIT where shit tier domestic enviroment where latest study shows something absurd like 90%/60%/30% of top 10/100/1000 Indian talent leaves country within a few years. Except in certain fields, one would be hard pressed to find same # of Chinese talent who graduated at top of the districts/classes going abroad anymore. Most are staying in PRC, because opportunties abound when you're at top and QoL pretty good. Leaving is harder than ever.
Put some numbers on PRC talent outflow, it's insignificant to what stays even post narrative of covid scaring Chinese to leave. And I know many who left, mostly retiring people whose just looking for places to park their money abroad. But talent that moves PRC up strategic values chains in S&T, very few, and as this article points, established strategic talent are moving back in record numbers where there's more upward mobility without red scare. This is without mentioning PRC students to NA has basically halved post covid. Dumb napkin math for illustration: US taking 4/10 PRC talent from before vs 3/100 now. The former subsantially degrades PRC talent pipeline, the latter barely makes a dent. And If US can only add 20 talent per year, then PRC's net 97 is going to matter over time, as in short/medium term time. Maybe talent import is needed after 50 years, at a point it's to sustain a PRC that has 2-3x more skilled workforce than US. But A) that's really not a competition anymore B) long enough time horizon that it's hard to speculate.
Yes US still have access to EU/IN talent, but again politics limit how much they can brain drain / absorb, so net inflow of US talent is no where close to net PRC talent production. Or people from "all over world" is basically ~1B (granted set to grow) English speakers (including non 1st language) or about the pool of Mandarin speakers. Remove PRC talent and US loses a huge chunk of talent access, especially from PRC pipeline with relatively proven ability to generate useful talent. And ultimately this matters because PRC making 50-100M STEM by 2050 while US population only set to expand by 40M is an insurmountable skilled workforce gap. It's not a demographic bomb as unparallel divident. Hence I doubt PRC need to import high end talent 50-100m STEM is stupid amount to make jobs for. Denying US PRC talent isn't about crippling US talent procurement, which US immigration policy does itself. It's about retaining PRC compatible talent - as you say, US can draw from English world, PRC largely rely from drawing from within. US denying itself large segment of talent that only benefits PRC to retain is a relative win. It's like the one area where could US win by default but chooses to cede.
PRC will remain effectively closed to talent, so they have to produce their own and what they lose to emigration they hardly get back. Put it this way: a whole generation of Chinese previous STEM students from top universities are now in upper leadership positions...in the USA. It remains to be seen if similar younger talent now will grow to that under the Chinese 996 system.
> Denying US PRC talent isn't about crippling US talent procurement, which US immigration policy does itself. It's about retaining PRC compatible talent - as you say, US can draw from English world, PRC largely rely from drawing from within. US denying itself large segment of talent that only benefits PRC to retain is a relative win. It's like the one area where could US win by default but chooses to cede.
I don't know how you can say this with a straight face when PRC immigration policies are much much worse. The USA has a system that is hard to get through, sure, but many many people get through it with permanent residency and citizenship at the end. Very very few get through the PRC's immigration system, even of Chinese descent, as you say all China can do is retain talent.
> It's like the one area where could US win by default but chooses to cede.
Again, the fact that the USA grants 740k green cards a year is not small potatoes, and many of those are in tech, high level STEM positions of talent. When I worked in China, I was the only foreigner in my team, maybe a few foreigners in our entire lab. Now, I'm working at Google in the USA, I can count the born-in-America types on one hand, most of my coworkers are immigrants, a long with a lot of young Chinese new grads. It doesn't feel like much as changed on the ground, but ya, Indian immigrants are gaining lots of ground over Chinese immigrants in leadership positions and such, which is something I wouldn't have predicted 20 years ago (look at the top CEO positions).
US needs immigration to fulfill new workforce demands, PRC doesn't. PRC generates more talent than US can bring in via immigration. Hence trend towards large workforce gap.
US does not produce and brain drain enough talent for her needs. Yes US has one of the more permissive immigration systems in the world, but IT'S NO LONGER ENOUGH relative to PRC indigenous talent pipeline. 3/4 million is small potatoes when you're up against 5M+. US isn't competing against PRC on immigration, it's competing on net workforce improvement. US unlikely to have political space to massively ramp up immigration, maybe can close shortage gap, but increasing by 3-4M to stay at parity with PRC isn't politically happening.
>with a straight face
You're overinterpretting, I'm not saying US is ceding absolute immigration advantage, I'm saying it's ceding it's advantage of being able to brain drain PRC talent via generating bad domestic enviroment for ethnically Chinese talent that is pushing many to leave.
>whole generation of Chinese previous STEM students from top universities are now in upper leadership positions...in the USA
Yes, which I acknowledged. But now they're largely staying in PRC for years (precovid) US isn't braindraining PRC best on scale that can degrade PRC indigenous industries anymore. There is a generational difference talent willing to emmigrate. Hence US ceding her all upside advantage of draining/denying PRC access to her best, and now has to redirect to draining more of (likely) India's best. This is arguably triple win for PRC.
All of which is to say, yes US immigration is still a US strength, but it's advantage is vastly diminished vs PRC building up indigenous talent pipeline over last few decades. That +2 advantage was insurmountable gap when most of world was at +0, or even -1 (brain drain), but now it's up against PRC's+5. And where US could feasibly degrade PRC +5 into +4, it chose not to, instead pushing that -1 onto India.
Agree with the odd framing. Because some Chinese scientists are going back to China, doesn't mean America has lost the game. There is lots of brain power in the world, not only from China. America gets and can get smart immigrants from many other places.
Agreed, the US immigration system is only just barely decent to you if you're a highly skilled scientist in an in-demand field, but when your home country is quickly catching up on offering good opportunities and can pay more relative to cost of living, it's understandable that they're increasingly choosing not to stay.
Especially if they're of Chinese or Russian origin, it's many years of fighting to prove you deserve to be here with increased scrutiny whenever it's politically favorable for whoever is in charge.
Even with India, immigration is such a grueling process, with just another decade or so of development to create more opportunities and we'll probably be seeing a similar process with Indians. India even has a slightly lower barrier in that compared to Russia and China there's less totalitarianism to make people prefer the US.
US Immigration bad? 3 million Indian H1B's have arrived in the last 20 or so years. How can it be bad? The US accepts more immigrants every year than any other country in the world, how can it be bad?
H1Bs are not citizens, unlike naturalized immigrants. They are effectively "indentured servants" of the company that sponsored them, and have a gruelling 10-20 yr application process to gain full citizenship.
The fact that you don't know this is exactly what the OP was referring to, since most US natural born citizens don't know about it much.
This is not true for all H1B visa holders. I know many who have obtained their permanent residency after a few years. This is not in the IT field though but medical field.
H1B terminates in permanent residency, but if you are from certain countries (India, China, Philippines, Mexico), you have to wait for quota to free up (so you are in limbo having an extension of your visa but no PR yet). Still, to say that only “a lucky few” get green cards from an H1B is disingenuous when the vast majority get them within a few years of their renewal ending (after 6 years). The USA still issues 740k green cards a year, after all.
Somebody applying for PR on jan 1st 2009 (from india, for example), is just now able to receive their green card (in 2023). While the majority (~50%) of the wait is around 5-6 years, there's some 20-25% that have 10-19 years of wait times!
And because the quota system is nationality based, the more populous nations tend to have higher wait times.
It isn’t just the more populated countries. It is any country with a lot of emigration to the USA proportional to their own population. So India, China, Philippines, Mexico. China is at 4 years, Mexico and the Philippines are at 1.25 year, India is at 14 years.
I agree it’s dumb and we shouldn’t do it that way, but India is a huge outlier under the current system.
>>> It is in every way a demeaning and torturous process. You get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with
Did you have a very bad experience with US immigration? I've been dealing with it for a couple of decades, from non immigrant visas to GC and while its definitely a pain in the ass, it hasn't been anything like that^.
There's a lot of waiting, and a lot of uncertainty and anxiety but it was never personal for me or anyone I know.
There was just a few days ago an AMA by a US immigration lawyer filed to the brim with stories of rich tech workers in all sorts of ridiculous scenarios at the hands of absurd US immigration policy and personnel.
Personally I got married due to visa issues and then had to leave the US for a year and a half (spent in London) until we got the greencard. This and all the paperwork and the shitty way they talk to people at the border is nothing compared to the other people I know that either couldn’t work (or their spouse couldn’t work) due to the visa type OR they were slaves of their employers til they got their greencard. Fuck US immigration.
That being said I’ve heard my country (France) isn’t that much better when it comes to handling immigration.
The way that immigration is handled by many countries is just as bad, if not way worse. So when pointing the finger, many need to also look at the immigration policies of their own countries, to get a balanced perspective.
My experience matched yours, and I am not Caucasian, but I completed mine well over a decade ago and it was a normal application.
I believe immigration policy has had a major change around seven years ago for the worse. This is anecdotal, but one of my uni friends is a from an allied country (S Korea) and he had a terrible experience. I don’t remember all the details, but the process seems years longer now and they treated him like he was an enemy spy even though he’s been here for decades prior, has published several papers, and likely has no connections with anything sketchy. Most people would have just said fuck it and went back home. Thankfully, he endured and is now tenured as a CompE prof.
Imo the US is likely no longer reaping the benefits from the brain drain due to the new draconian policies for legal immigration. It is a dumb (or even racist) overreaction when you lump in even people from allied countries in light of the chip war
The only thing I can say is that yes I had bad experiences with them. The kinds of scrutiny and restrictions they put on me made me feel like a criminal even though I have not even a speeding ticket in this country. I am not comfortable saying anything else.
May I ask what is your birth country? From what I know, it depends a lot on where you come from.
the us immigration system is deeply dehumanizing. The presumptions, control, classism, the authoritarian language, the implication that access to some perfect garden is being granted, that the lucky recipient will never want to leave...
it's like some performative piece of propaganda, that you' must participate in, enthusiastically, in order to get the reward. (permission from the state to enter "it's" borders.)
at a prior company, a coworker was a young, single, pakistani male. the company was remote-first, did company meetups twice a year. About 30 or 40 people, maybe.
Anyway, every time he entered the USA, we'd lament together about the litany of indignities he'd suffer at the hands of various authorities. It was sort of like filling out a bingo card.
I did a lot of apologizing, and explaining how xenophobia has been baked deeply into american institutions.
As the US citizen partner to an immigrant who now has their green card from our marriage, it was anything but simple. It is definitely the simplest way, by far, but it is not simple. It was very eye opening to me to see the journey from the inside.
I'm a natural-born US citizen and it has repeatedly been a serious pain for me. One such case... I was managing a team that was hiring someone away from another company. That person was in the US on an H-1B visa. When we put in the application to transfer her visa, the government responded with an RFE (Request For Evidence). They wanted evidence that we truly needed her skills, that we couldn't find a US citizen with the same skills, and that we weren't just a staffing agency (the last one was silly - the company is a household name in the US with a large engineering org and no connection whatsoever to staffing).
Our immigration lawyers' first advice was to rescind the offer as it wasn't worth the work unless the new hire was truly exceptional. This was at a time when RFE success rates where at an all time low (our lawyers told us to expect a 90% chance of failure). We believed she was worth it, so we decided to move forward. The lawyers also told us that we only get one shot - there is no second chance or appeal. So you must provide overwhelming evidence.
It consumed my time for weeks, making all kinds of other things fall behind, all with no guarantee of paying off. And she was riddled with stress throughout the process. The lawyers gave me a laundry list of tasks to do. I ended up producing ~100 pages of documentation about what the team did, what she would do in a typical day, examples of what her work product would be, how it was connected to the company's business, and why it required a graduate degree in mathematics. Some of that was difficult as our lawyers said I couldn't reveal the nature of our proprietary algorithms because these documents are treated as private. On top of demonstrating that it required a graduate degree, we had to demonstrate why a US citizen with nothing more than a high school education could not do the job (and evidence that a PhD in math was needed was not enough according to our lawyers).
Part of it involved me spending two hours being interviewed by a math prof from a top US university. The first hour was convincing him that I knew enough math to know what I was talking about (kind of like my first math final in 30 years). Then explaining enough about the systems the team worked on to convince him that it required an advanced math degree. Luckily he was fascinated by our problems/solutions and every idea he brought up about approaches to try were things we had already incorporated or ruled out. Helping him understand why they did / did not work ended up being pretty convincing.
After we supplied our RFE response, we waited for another month or two. Luckily her transfer was approved. She started a week later and I'm glad we put in the work - she was amazing.
To tie it back to the article, two years later she left to move back to China because she wanted to have kids and she didn't want them exposed to the overt racism that she faced in the US (especially the horrific behavior she faced in the weeks leading up to lockdown). And going back was no easy task. She applied for jobs at ~20 companies there. She received two offers and took one of them in Beijing. When she got there, she learned that they had over 1,000 applicants with PhDs for the single position she filled. It's hard to imagine that level of competition. We wouldn't have had to go through the RFE pain if so much talent were available in the US. But she was happy to face that competition to raise her kids in China.
I have a colleague from China who originally tried to move to the US. He became so disillusioned by the process that he gave up and tried Japan instead, as it provides a similar level of freedom. Within 3 years of just working a regular software job and studying the language, he got permanent residency. A lawyer did all of the heavy lifting. Just an anecdote, but maybe an example of the US losing talent to its insane immigration system.
Japan is a nation whose birthrates are so low its own government speaks of extinction of the japanese people. They aren't exactly in a position to refuse immigrants. The US won't be either if current trends continue.
I think you’re vastly overestimating the degree to which the us government wants to keep them here, and I’d be far from surprised to see caps put in place for Chinese student visas within the next five years.
> Maybe China is playing it dirty and forces these scientists to come back.
Or maybe 'China provides many opportunities for its citizens to study abroad and expand their horizons' and their citizens want to help their own country in turn?
> Sure, "freedom" and "human rights" are something but frankly
Nobody immigrates for 'freedom' and 'human rights'? Everyone immigrates for 'better life' - money. And what freedom and human rights do the chinese lack?
> You get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with.
Good. Why should non-citizens be treated the same as citizens? Every country should treat their citizens better than non-citizens.
> There must be an incentive for these people to endure that kind of process.
'Freedom' and 'human rights'. Funny isn't it? It's sounds so stupid when you say it out loud and yet the dumb masses believe it.
> And for many Chinese whose homeland in every way a direct competitor to the US, there aren't enough reasons.
Good. It means china is advancing and providing opportunities for their own people. These chinese scientists should go home and help create china's harvard, mit, etc. And hopefully india, south america, africa and rest of the world follows china's example. The blueprint is there and if china is able to develop then so can the rest of the world.
>The United States is home to the highest number of immigrants in the world. An estimated 50.6 million people in the United States—a bit more than 15% of the total population of 331.4 million—were born in a foreign country. The number of immigrants in the U.S. has increased by at least 400% since 1965.
By the way, the USA takes more immigrants every year than any other country in the world. I myself went through the process and was treated with complete respect and it wasn't easy but well worth it to become an American and be welcomed into the Land of Milk and Honey.
The US was a lot of things. It still is on some fronts, but others have seen decline.
Your experience was certainly true. It is why so many are trying to come here. But things have changed and the experience is not what it used to be. If you think it was difficult before, think about how it has to be now for people to choose to go back instead of persevering. The trend is clear. Things changed. The US can either fix it and remain competitive by hoarding talents. Or it will continue to deteriorate.
There are always warning signs. Immigration laws has been called antiquated and desperately in need of reform for a long time. Your sentiment of "it was good in my time" is how hegemons like Britain fell.
Maybe they have the highest number of immigrants, but as a percentage of the population other nations are higher and USA is very far down. Canada, Norway, Sweden are all higher... USA isn't even in the top 50 when looking at total % of the population.
This is true, but not exclusive to China and the Chinese people. I've immigrated to the US from Europe about 13 years ago and it was a very legally and financially painful process. I've since acquired a B.S.,M.S.,and a Ph.D. in a highly desirable specialization and haven't been able to find a job in the US. This country has left me poor, in debt and hopeless. My wife and I are packing our bags and moving back to Europe. I don't see any opportunity for myself or my children in this declining, chaotic, money hungry country.
Is it just simply because there were 5 folds more Chinese people study in US from a decade ago?
I don’t like the word “send”. AFAIK China was not paying for their tuitions.
This is surprising to hear, is there any hard data on this? My naive assumption would be that US benefits from brain drain in vast majority of situations.
On the flip side; what exactly does US society provide to Chinese (and to a lesser extent, Indians) ?
They're constantly demonized by the media. They're treated as essentially 'devil-worshipping' orientals ('Communism' for China; 'Hinduism' for Indians). They have to deal with 60s-era racially-motivated immigration laws that limit the same number of Green-Cards for Norway/Sweden (and other tiny 5-million large countries) as that for each of China/India.
On some level the Americans (and Westerners) can't come to terms with their own glaring hypocrisy. They are intense ethno-nationalists but will pretend to be anything but, and claim their own culture is universal and anyone who doesn't subscribe to it is the devil's pawn. (To wit, the LGBTQ flag is now a more obvious fixture in front of US embassies).
Asians are too, but they aren't obsessed with it, nor do they over do it due to not having a 'religion' hang over them culturally (other than ofc. when they're 'saved' by some occidental import; Buddhism etc. are not 'religions').
Indians atleast have to contend with essentially a vestigial-colonial state that is essentially a kleptocracy which just happens to be run by people who're 'liked' by the 'global elite' because they're, very much like zealous RW Xtian nuts, destroying India's historical 'pagan' culture and language (India's constitution for instance denies Hindus religious rights, unlike that for Xtians/Muslims; and imposes English on a large population that barely understands it).
China (like imperial Japan) too was 'liked' when they were destroying their own culture/traditions for 'secular Xtianity'. Not anymore I guess.
I half agree. What pisses me off though is that a lot of Chinese people who immigrate to the US still can’t say anything bad about their own country and just shove any criticism under the idea that western media just hates China. I’d pick US nationalism over Chinese nationalism.
It's not that they can't say anything bad about China. It's just that everything said about China is negative in the US. When was the last time you read something positive about China in the mainstream media?
1.4 billion people and nothing good happens there according to western media. That's just propaganda.
That’s just not true. You can find lots of good things about China. But sure, if you compare this to Chinese media that has nothing bad to say about the country then you’re going to faint lol.
how is it "a demeaning and torturous process", above and beyond dealing with any faceless bureaucracy (i.e. dealing with the DMV, IRS, or even airline lost baggage departments, or your local cable company)?
"you get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with." isn't this effectively the situation with immigrating to any desirable country (and even some undesirable ones)?
Well, for starters, there are many points of the process where your entire future is down to the mood of the immigration officer at the airport. Making it so that the safest way to not have to potentially uproot your entire life in hours is to just keep your head down and be a good little indentured servant until you get lucky in a lottery.
Happened to travel internationally, either to see family for a week or for a conference in the 3 years between finishing your education and getting a chance at an H1B? Maybe they'll let you back in, maybe they won't, no one can say.
Happened to study and work here for over a decade, slaved away for an employer to convince them to sponsor your residency?, Employer screws up your green card application after pushing it off till the H1B limit, you get screwed and have to leave with zero recourse.
It's no wonder illegal immigration is such a big issue here, especially with sanctuary cities, you come and stay illegally and governments will bend over backwards to help you stay, you come here, get an advanced education and work hard to remain in legal status for a significant chunk of your life, supporting yourself financially and giving back to the country and you get kicked out for something that wasn't even your fault.
In comparison DMVs and even the IRS aren't renowned for being in the habit of completely wrecking someone's life's plans over the mood of one random person. There are pretty blatantly wrong things people have to do (and keep doing) for the DMV or IRS to have a similar impact on their lives.
The irony is in how the US claims to be all about equality and opportunity. But then it treats one of the most productive classes of its residents as second class who do not deserve some basic legal protections.
Still, to answer your question, the difference is in the number of dealings an immigrant has to go through and the consequences if any of these goes badly. If you mess up your DMV meeting every 5 years, no big deal. You failed to update your address in your annual license renewal as an immigrant? That is a potential black mark that can get your green card denied and your life ruined.
Maybe it is the case for every country to treat immigrants like that. But when the US is built by immigrants, it should have an incentive to do better than that. Otherwise, why would people immigrate here instead of all the other "desirable" countries, or maybe just come back home? In such situations, sure, the US hasn't done wrong. It simply had done worse than it used to. And that can be a subjective sign of decline depending on how you look at it.
The immigration system has a duty to the citizens, not to the immigrants - except as far as it preserves human rights and serves the citizens.
You’re not entitled to citizenship. We didn’t get it by birth alone, we got it because our lineage dedicated their life to building this country into what it is and passed it on to their children.
That you have this entitlement towards US citizenship means you don’t deserve it at all.
That is false. Check the 14th amendment on jus soli. Your own constitution, written by the founders of your country disagrees with you.
By standards of the US citizenship test. You do not qualify for citizenship.
See how arbitrary it is? Also statistically, per person, immigrants contribute to the US more than its own citizens. Your attempt of using "lineage" is so ridiculous I don't know what to say. If you truly believe that, then we should have kings and queens again because their "lineages" sure are prestigious and contribute a lot to the country.
But of course, the US founders were vehemently against it, as written in the constitution and the declaration of independence. So I guess you again proved you failed the citizenship test.
I know you receive citizenship with birth on US soil, but that wasn’t implemented because the state has some obligation to someone simply due to the dirt above which they were born.
The reason that law was implemented was to recognize the states duty to the offspring of the people of the nation. Do you really think the framers of the 14th amendment would agree with loopholes like “anchor babies”? Of course not, because while they were born here, the intent behind the 14th was to grant immediate citizenship to the offspring of the people who built the country. This is what I mean. Anchor babies were an unforeseen flaw.
It’s not arbitrary. You think it’s arbitrary because you have the impression that the US is just some economic zone with a basket of benefits. ITS NOT. We’re a nation of people. The nation and its people have no obligation to you or any other non member of the people. YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO IT. Why do you think you deserve citizenship? You think so because it would benefit you, not thinking for a second whether you’d benefit the nation or it’s people.
Given that you view the country this way, you don’t deserve it either. We’re not a basket of benefits to be plundered by the whole world.
The duty of the nation is to its people and them alone. Immigrants come only if they are a benefit to the people and the people want them. The state acts on behalf of the people in this mission.
That is a load of bull and you are either uninformed and think your opinion equals facts or you are intentionally trying to spread misinformation.
>Concerning the children born in the United States to parents who are not U.S. citizens (and not foreign diplomats), three senators, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lyman Trumbull, the author of the Civil Rights Act, as well as President Andrew Johnson, agreed, asserting that both the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment would confer citizenship on them at birth, and no senator offered a contrary opinion
> I voted for the proposition to declare that the *children of all parentage, whatever*, born in California, should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States, entitled to equal Civil Rights with other citizens.
If you actually read the history of the law, you will know that the actual intention for "natural born" is whether a child was born under the US authority or a foreign power. And since US authority supersedes all others on US soil, the law effectively grants citizenship to people born here.
And funny how much assumption you are throwing out about me right now. I am entitled to it and you have zero say about it. I know because people who have more authority than you granted it to me for the benefits I have brought to this country.
You still haven't addressed the fact that immigrants are more productive and contribute more than natives. That fact alone destroyed your stupid arguments and you know it. So you resorted to personal attacks and claims of "entitlement". A pathetic and sad attempt especially on this kind of site where almost any immigrant is much more skilled and employed in a much more prestigious position than the average American. But you want to know what the real American's ideals regarding people and their "benefits"?
> What are the words written on the Statue of Liberty?
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
None of this is about benefits. I am done with this conversation. You reek of being a nationalist and isolationist. The very foundation of the US is built on taking on immigrants and helping others. You aren't American at heart and the only reason you are called one is because you were born here. Ironic isn't it?
> Among the scientists of Chinese descent who left the US in 2010, 48% moved to China, and 52% relocated to other countries.
Given the half/half split, this is less about China and more about the US (also discussed in the article, but to clarify as some comments seem to assume the contrary)
continuing, article claim is that 5 years of US counter-intelligence investigation of chinese nationals has resulted in many unjust dismissed investigations and chinese scientists fear being accused.
A clearly biased view that ignores the unusually high number of Chinese exchange students and researchers that were caught performing military surveillance. One could just as easily blame China for creating a hostile environment rather than US immigration policy, which is among the most lenient of any country. Let's not ignore the fact that the US takes in more legal immigrants per capita than any other country. And that's aside from illegal immigrants, which are estimated to also number more per capita than any other country.
If the goal is to gain research, appealing to countries other than China, may simply be a safer bet. That is unless the US assumes Chinese immigrants are somehow better than other countries of origin. And if they did, it would be just as discriminatory.
Considering the way the US was mistreating researchers of Chinese descent, charging them criminally for forgetting to list an offhand meeting with a single person of the many they might have met in China, in one of many grant requests they submitted.
Punishing the many for the crimes of a handful of people was obviously gonna result in something like this.
That being said, it will be interesting to see if this trend has continued. The data here is only till 2021 and since then the US has ended the more blatantly racist persecution, China’s growth story has stalled, and Xi Jinping has gone into full arbitrary authoritarian mode.
1. The FBI has been ruthlessly persecuting Chinese people with absolutely absurd charges. For example, "In a grant application you didn't list that you had met for coffee with X other student from your alma mater when you visited China for Lunar New Year. This constitutes fraud and possibly espionage." A grant application is not an SSBI application! These are genuinely absurd standards to be applying to people. The fact that the FBI has been overwhelmingly losing these racially motivated cases is cold comfort - having extremely powerful secretive police harassing you and your family is extremely distressing even if their case against you is ultimately unsuccessful, and the fact that they know they're losing and keep doing it suggests their intent is to try and discourage you from talking to any of your friends or family back in China, or leave the country. Careful what you wish for.
2. Declared academic collaboration between academic institutions in the US and China is being cracked down on as well. People and their families are being investigated with no evidence given as to why, the federal government is contacting US universities and convincing them to end collaborative programs, etc. The reasons given, if any, are that the Chinese are stealing American technology through these academic collaborations. Thinking for two seconds about what, exactly, an academic collaboration is intended to accomplish should show how absurd the "stealing" idea is.
3. A lot of the most valuable work in academia is collaborative, and a lot of the specific career value in being a Chinese national or having Chinese family ties in US academia is that you can function as an expert go-between for the two largest and most important countries for scientific research. When the US is not just devaluing but actively stigmatising some of your skills, it can force people to choose. The US is richer per capita, has more freedoms in many respects, etc, but the persecution by police is going to impact your assessment of where you'd rather live, especially when the PRC has open arms, lots of grant money, and scientists have a good position in society there too.
4. Hate crimes against Chinese people have been increasing dramatically for years. Chinese communities know this and also see very clearly that it's not a priority for either political party to do anything about it. Not much to say about this, it's obvious why you wouldn't want to live somewhere where there are enough people in the population committing hate crimes against you that most people are in community with a victim, and then there's no political will to do anything about it.
4. There's genuine concern about the possibility of war. If you know anyone in the American military, you know that war with China is on everyone's mind. Different dates get floated, from 2030 to 2027 to 2025, but it's essentially received wisdom in the US military that there is going to be a war in the westpac theatre at some point. This view ("We should be prepared") is also essentially bipartisan in the political realm, and American media are doing their part too. Chinese people notice, they can see the current (illegal, racist) persecution by the government, and most of them have enough historical knowledge to understand that the dynamics that lead to the Japanese internment camps haven't fundamentally changed - the camps themselves weren't even ruled to be illegal until 2018, only 5 years ago! If you were Chinese, would you want to stay in America and take the risk that you might end up confined to a camp, or wearing an ankle bracelet with a microphone everywhere just so the government can say that they didn't put a particular ethnic minority in literal camps? Genuinely, would you take that risk, with what you know about America? If the American government goes to war with China, and they decided on this sort of large scale persecution of Chinese people, do you think that any significant quantity of Americans with any political power would stand up for the Chinese people in America, or would it be like 9/11 where the government persecuted Muslims en masse and there was zero political will to stop them for years?
No I’m referring to the fact that every time there’s an Asian involved in a crime people say this stuff, and when I look into it it’s not a racially motivated crime. I’ve seen this enough time to realize that people will use the fact that they belong to a group when it helps them get more power
> hate crime: a crime, typically one involving violence, that is motivated by prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or similar grounds.
Thanks for the links. I’m not saying hate crimes don’t exist, I’m saying it’s blown up. And indeed your second link shows that Asian hate crimes are last even after hate crimes against white people xD
I think we should try to lower crime and racism in general, not just for Asians.
You misread the data on the second last link. Those numbers are absolute reported and qualifying incidents. When you account for group population size, per capita the incidence of hate crimes against Asian Americans are quite high - not as high as those against Blacks and Jews, but 4x higher than against Hispanics and 8x higher than those against whites.
Unlike you, I have data to back up my argument. It’s not paranoia.
If you’re willing to ignore data just to preserve your narrative, that just shows that you don’t care very much for facts and you’d rather remain ignorant of what’s happening.
The only constant in life is change, and the best way to account for it is with quantitative data.
> The team also conducted a survey in 2021–2022 of nearly 1400 Chinese Americans in tenured or tenure-track positions at US universities that revealed that 35% of them feel unwelcome, and 72% do not feel safe.
> Furthermore, 42% are fearful of conducting research in the US, 65% are worried about pursuing collaborations with China and 86% perceive that it is harder to recruit top international students now compared with five years ago. Of the survey respondents who have obtained US federal grants 45% say that they will avoid applying for such awards for fear of making mistakes in the application process that could lead to them being investigated.
So...what % of white American scientists would leave a European country in which they did probably not feel safe, perhaps felt unwelcome, etc., etc.?
But my point was that Chinese-descent scientists in America might be rational human beings, making decision about where to live and work based on their perceptions of the risks, costs & benefits. Not some "tired, poor, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free" out of a simplistic American Patriotism story.
That’s fair. I don’t generally think of Russia when people say Europe, but historically it is (at least the parts that are in control politically). If someone in the US says “I’m taking a vacation in Europe” and I ask “oh which cities are you visiting” and they say “Moscow”, I would be pretty surprised, but that doesn’t make it not Europe.
I’d also be curious if you have a less trivial example, since it sounded like you had multiple in mind with the generalization and I’m not sure which countries I should be avoiding (I didn’t know about any).
On a side note it blows my mind that the Russians weren’t brought into the fold after the USSR collapsed. Incredible missed opportunity for peace.
Agree the Chinese here may be doing the rational thing. I think people in the west have an exaggerated view of how bad China is for Chinese. Culturally we are offended by a lot of the government practices, but not everyone has the same culture (of course).
Ireland between the Easter Rising and...um...maybe the Irish Republic leaving the British Commonwealth? 1930's Germany and Italy. Spain under Franco. Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Greece under the junta. Yugoslavia when US/NATO bombs were falling in the '90's. Etc., etc., ...
(Vs. one of the older definitions amounted to "good Catholics like us, not those Eastern Orthodox heretics". I'll guess that later definitions included "whites who are not Slavs", and "on our side of the Iron Curtain".)
Neither Russia's "just look at that (Mercator projection) map!" geographic dominance by Siberian tundra and subarctic land, nor Russia's current economic dependence on the West Siberian petroleum basin make it a non-European country.
Anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt: but similar things have been and are happening with scientists from other countries.
From the family grapevine, I've heard that other Ukranians, Russians, and others from former Soviet states at places like Fermilab with impressive degrees are leaving the country after 25+ years. Some of them have left because they could never really get a foothold in the country, and others because they feel they are just tired of it after so long. Compared to how things were after the collapse of the Union, it has improved, it's more tempting to go back now than to stay. QoL has never been as good as it is now, unless of course you're a military aged male))
I had this same thought, but given the blatant profiling of the China Initiative for four years —- to say nothing of other social prejudices, it might not have taken so much pressure but rather a gentle nudge to consider one’s environment.
I don’t doubt there’s been some interference by the Chinese government. I’m just not sure they could run a full-on scare tactics campaign without it blowing up.
Do talk to your foreign colleagues about the immigration bureaucracy one of these days, it's frankly inhumane. China is simply offering better conditions, no need to apply the whip when you can hand out carrots.
The waiting time for E2 preference for Chinese nationals is 4 years (priority date 9 July 2019, for Indian nationals it's 12 years (priority date 1 Jan 2011). That's what most academics would fall under (I certainly did). Those who fall under E1 preference will get their Green Card a little faster.
US immigration is a fraught topic. People with no or second-hand experience of the immigration system will manage to upset those who had to navigate it even with the best of intents. They would do well to keep silence.
Not really. Academics are often EB2, but there is a separate queue for academics. They do not distinguish between origin in that queue. An Indian is treated the same as any other country.
I can understand some of it given some notable examples of IP theft by China, but it’s absolutely bonkers when even people from allied countries like South Korea are part of the witch hunt unless members of the justice department can’t differentiate Asians from different countries.
If by that you mean "pressuring with large sums of money for both personal compensation and research funding", then yes.
From what I've read, if China wants you (not just Chinese, but also foreigners) you can go from struggling to secure grants to having money thrown at you in China.
"Perceived espionage" , there are plenty of convictions and proof of CCP using university "confucious centers" to recruit assets and entire police departments in US,Canada and EU to control chinese people who migrated to the US for these reasons. This reads like a highly biased hit piece.
I don't think the US is better off with foreign nationals that seek education in the US but have no desire to get permanent residency. Especially at public uni's and NSF funded programmes at private colleges.
> I don't think the US is better off with foreign nationals that seek education in the US but have no desire to get permanent residency
I don't think this comment draws the distinction between people who came here without long-term plans, and people who came here and left because they felt they would not be welcome long-term.
I have no problem with people that do not feel welcome and leave. I have a problem with those whose plan was to get US education and go back home. I believe much of the people that are going back for whatever reason never planned to stay. The article as well makes no attempt to prove that isn't the case. That's why I said it reads like propaganda, that and the "perceived espionage" phrase usage.
> I have a problem with those whose plan was to get US education and go back home.
Why? If I (an American) studied in the UK, did I somehow betray the British by returning to the U.S. after? I paid tuition, I contributed to the economy while there, I helped bridge cultural gaps.
I specifically pointed out public unis and NSF grants because they are tax payer funded investments. College isn't free in the US, foreigners would attend their own colleges but whatever benefit a US college created, if it is taxpayer funded should prioritize those who will stay to benefit the public.
Your example is also peculiar because of the relationship between the US and UK, any advantages you gained in the UK might help the US instead of the UK but it will not harm the UK's security or industry because of friendly relations, legal cooperations and extradition treaties. China and countries not friendly to the US training people in the US who will go back and develop industry and technological advantage all on US taxpayer's dime isn't the same thing. Even when you pay tuition, a public uni or a gov sponsored grant is subsidizing much of the cost you would otherwise been expected to pay.
> I believe much of the people that are going back for whatever reason never planned to stay
But why do you believe that? You're asking for the article to prove that isn't the case, and I'm asking in all earnestness, what is the argument that it would be the case?
Because I know first hand plenty of immigrants that come to the US simply to get an education and go back. Nothing wrog with that, and it seems unreasonable to say all Chinese people who come to the US to attend school intended to stay in the US long term.
I mean, student visas don't even allow most of them to stay if they wanted to, you can look up student visa stats for China to find proof for my point.
> I don't think the US is better off with foreign nationals that seek education in the US...
I know a guy whose wife was once a bank teller, near a major (public) US research university. By his telling, arriving Chinese (mainland) college students typically opened their bank accounts with mid-6-figure deposits.
Perhaps you should talk to someone in the tourism or hospitality industry, about your great new idea of turning away pay-top-dollar customers en mass?
(And maybe also talk to an average research staffer doing NSF-funded research, about just how wretched the pay, hours, and job security are. Sunk Cost fallacies and social status aside, many of those folks would really be better off mowing lawns and flipping burgers.)
They can keep their tourism money, education isn't tourism nor is it banking. People gain critical skills that can make or break a nation's economy, industries and national security advantage. Since when is the US reliant on Chinese ir any other tourism at such a high cost! If they have so much money, paying private schools is well within their reach and maybe they should be helping fund research with their high tuition instead of private schools getting a grant?
This isn’t tourism, this is education. It is about training for skills that are presumably valuable for the country to have. Since there are also a limited number of spots and the tax payers foot the bill we should be more concerned that the people who get the spots are going to be in it for the long haul. Mercenaries have always been a questionable investment.
Of course the NSF should pay more, but saying “people don’t want these jobs” is more of a cheapskate slogan to justify exploitation.
These spots aren’t generally subsidized for foreign students. Higher education in the US has many types of price discrimination and subsidies so it’s a complex topic but foreign students will generally be charged a premium.
Also rather than a fixed number of slots most schools grow and shrink based on demand. That’s why so many more people can get educated vs 40 or even 20 years ago. There’s generally a huge surplus of people willing to teach outside of a few niche areas.
The "number of slots" at a university is limited in the exact same way as the number of tables at a fancy restaurant and the number of rooms at a nice hotel. The "limited" is a business model / marketing ploy - to maintain the air of exclusivity, and maximize revenue.
And for your "taxpayers foot the bill"? I live near the University of Michigan. Total "public university" state funding, per student, is maybe $7,000 per year. Vs. out-of-state undergraduate students are charged a ~$40,000 per year premium, over in-state tuition rates. (BTW, U of M total enrollment has increased ~50% in the past 30 years. Building more classrooms and hiring more staff is easy stuff, from a U-M Executive Suite PoV.)
My NSF point was not that NSF should pay more. It was that your "foreign nationals...NSF funded programs" argument is not logical. If we're paying crap wages to "best and brightest" foreign nationals, while American drop-outs do better flipping burgers...that sure doesn't sound like "them" taking advantage of "us". Quite the opposite.
The world including U.S. citizens are better off with a well educated population.
Research funded by foreign powers can still improve people’s lives with the added benefit that we don’t have to pay for it. Currently China has a terrible reputation when it comes to science, but there are also useful discoveries taking place.
That’s not to say there are zero downsides, but the vast majority of information these people are receiving is already freely available. US universities are world class, but there’s already some quite competitive schools in many other countries including China.
The problem everyone in this thread is missing is that by fueling Chinese education at US tax payer cost, their educational institutions and research programs already rival the US. Competition is fine but paying your competitor to win is silly.
The premium paid by many foreign students is well above what the average American is paying. Price discrimination by US schools is designed to maximize what they can extract and they are very skilled at it.
It’s a complicated topic with plenty of ambiguity, but on net the US is economically better off with these students. You can argue about past funding for these institutions, but at worst the net subsidy is minuscule compared to what foreign investors of US companies are receiving.
You could point to research grants for graduate students, but these people are doing actual work at below market rates. It’s comparable to H1B’s except they are paid less and more of that money is funneled back into the US economy.
No feelings on this either way. In fact it may be better for US to reduce the dependence on people from one nation. I have met a lot of very smart and hard working people from China who definitely deserve where they are. However on the flip side I have also witnessed crazy levels of favoritism (only hiring other Chinese) within their community both in academic and non-academic settings.
I'm not sure they should have been let into graduate schools the first place. Unlikely Asians of Indian or Taiwanese origin, mainland China origin scientists and students with graduate degrees have not contributed to the US economy commensurate (in terms of startups and R&D talent) with tax payers funding of their education.
In a better world, we'd all feel good about educating people to bring out the best in them, regardless of where they came from, or where they then go or what they then do.
This is a frankly racist and incredibly ignorant take. Besides those already mentioned:
Frank Yang
Chien-Shiung Wu
Yitang Zhang
Andrew Yao
Tak Wah Mak
Peidong Yang
And others. Science is meant to be free of politics, and the United States needs to be a place where all the brightest minds can come and contribute, regardless of who came before.
Look up Qian Xuesen, a former Caltech rocket scientist who helped establish the Jet Propulsion Laboratory before being deported in 1955 on suspicion of being a Communist and who became known as the father of China’s space and missile programs. "Alienating" our best and brightest is strategically among the worst thing we could do towards preserving the success of our nation.
He was not deported. He was stripped of his clearance during the ”Red scare” era, then decided to return to China of his own volition, but was held under house arrest for 5 years until 1955. At that time, a prisoner exchange with captured American pilots allowed him to return to China.
It should be noted that Qian came to the United States in 1935, when Japan was in the midst of a full-on invasion of mainland China. He received masters and PhD degrees from top U.S. universities, and held prestigious positions at CalTech and in the U.S. Department of War.
I have read that he was subjected to racial discrimination such as not being able to buy a house in certain neighborhoods.
But, overall, he escaped the Japanese invasion and enjoyed great freedom and success in the United States. He then showed his gratitude and loyalty by going back to China and sharing his knowledge and expertise to build up an enemy of the United States, soon after the Korean War.
I would say, Prof. Qian was an example of exactly what the U.S. government fears.
Primary source from 1955: "Scientist to be deported from USA" : "A JPL scientist will leave the US for Red China Friday under a deportation order, the US INS said yesterday."
I'm not familiar enough to expand on your other comments. I personally tried to avoid saying anything inaccurate, and I think historical sources back up my statements.
I am saying that he initially tried to move to China of his own volition in or around 1950. He was detained, probably because the U.S. was currently engaged in hostilities with China-allied forces and then with Chinese troops directly. His attempt to return to China could only be seen as defecting to the enemy.
i heard they cost the US taxpayer literally twice as much, possibly 3x as much as a taiwanese graduate student. it's incredible, sometimes they cost as much as a million dollars per year which gets funneled straight to the CCP.
Uni for international students in the US is extremely expensive unless you're pursuing a PhD, in which case you're usually fully covered by your PI. Although I don't really see how that's costing the taxpayer much unless that number is somehow accounting for the lost value of what someone who stays in the US after finishing their PhD would contribute to the economy.
Universities take most of the money from the student's funding source such that the student is only left enough to take care of their basic necessities, so it definitely isn't costing much in terms of stipends,
The tell is that a PhD position in the sciences that's worth anything is fully funded - the PI has grants that he will use to pay his graduate students. This isn't about undergrad education, it's about graduate level studies.
not just china. the ccp has operatives in every country. they can blackmail anyone at any time.
they have stolen trillions of dollars this way. possibly quadrillions, but we have no way of knowing. the scale of the theft is mind blowing. in the future it may go even higher.
Maybe China is playing it dirty and forces these scientists to come back. Or maybe it is simply that the US immigration is so hostile they don't see a future here. One of the main reasons people tried to go here is because of a chance of a better life. But when the naturalization process is so grueling and drawn out, they just don't bother anymore. Especially when China in big cities is providing pretty high standards of living to its citizens. Sure, "freedom" and "human rights" are something but frankly, those concerns are not relevant when we are talking about the upper class Han people. Stereotypes of rich Asian international students exist for a reason and that is because many of them come from rich and influential families. To these people, as long as you don't stir things up politically, they will feel safer and enjoy more rights in China than in the US.
Lots of US citizens do not understand the pain of immigration. It is in every way a demeaning and torturous process. You get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with. There must be an incentive for these people to endure that kind of process. And for many Chinese whose homeland in every way a direct competitor to the US, there aren't enough reasons.