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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

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.

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.