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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 si

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.

AYBABTME 3y ago
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.
- dirtyid 3y ago
  >US is still winning the talent war 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.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    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.
    - dirtyid 3y ago
      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.
wonder_er 3y ago
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!
tomohelix 3y ago
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.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  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.
  - tomohelix 3y ago
    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.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    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.
Tozen 3y ago
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.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

AYBABTME 3y ago

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.

dirtyid 3y ago
>US is still winning the talent war 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.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  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.
  - dirtyid 3y ago
    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.

wonder_er 3y ago

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!

tomohelix 3y ago

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.

jacquesm 3y ago
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.
- tomohelix 3y ago
  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.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  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.

Tozen 3y ago

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.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]