What factors influence the direction of global brain circulation: the case of Chinese Canada Research Chairholders

Abstract

As part of globalisation, academics have become more mobile and are tempted to move to institutions that have the most favourable research funding and work environment. The university is now viewed as a global magnet for academic talent and a key institution that enhances competitiveness by connecting cities and nations to global flows of knowledge and talent. Then what factors influence and explain the direction of global brain flows? This research intends to shed light on the relative strengths of the various factors that prompted a group of Canada Research Chairholders originating from Mainland China to choose to work in Canadian universities, something that is happening against the backdrop of a gradual shift of the global centre of economic gravity towards Asia. Such a shift finds expression in the academic world as well, so it is particularly interesting to track the views of these CRCs.

Keywords:

• brain circulation
• advanced country
• emerging economy
• Canada Research Chair
• Chinese scholars

Acknowledgements

The author is also grateful to Professors Paul Axelrod, Ruth Hayhoe, Dan Lang and Michael Skolnik for their valuable feedback and suggestions.

Funding

This work is an outcome of the research project ‘Canadian Universities and International Talent in a New Era of Global Geo-Politics’, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes

1. The CRCP allocates chairs to individual universities on the basis of each university’s three-year rolling average of research grant funding received from the three national granting agencies: the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Each university nominates one or more researchers to fill its allocation.

2. Some researchers use ‘foreign born’ in similar contexts, but the term may not be consistent with the definition used in this study. It often fails to differentiate between those who immigrated to Canada at a young age and those who came as adults and are truly international. All participants in this study completed their university education in Mainland China and thus came to Canada as adults.

3. The combined effect of these programmes and China’s booming economy has lured some of the best Chinese researchers in the USA back to China (Hvistendahl 2008; Wadhwa et al. 2009). For example, the Thousand Talent Program, launched in 2008, had recruited over 1500 leading scholars by 2011; of these, 70% were foreign nationals, mostly Chinese expatriates (Wang 2012).

4. Broadly speaking, Western Europe and the USA.

5. Academic intellectuals are those who engage in academic work more as ‘legislators’ and ‘interpreters’, that is, those who can contribute to a creative destruction and reconstruction of the paradigms in an academic field (Kim 2010).

6. The works cited are admittedly not current, but they are all classical studies in the field and remain broadly accurate. In an email responding to the author’s question about the validity of his study, Skolnik asserted that many US-Canada differences described in his paper applied until recently, when the Obama administration launched the reform policies that aim to improve equality in American society.

7. In 2012, the top 50 universities in China (ranked by research funds) had CAN$194 million on average to support their research activities (MoE 2012), while the research income of the top 50 Canadian universities averaged CAN$133 million (CAUT 2013).