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Abstract
Since the topic of ‘brain drain’ was introduced to the United Nations’ debates in the late 1960s, policy thinking on skilled migration has shifted its focus from discouraging emigration in the 1970s to encouraging returns in the 1980s, and to facilitating ‘brain circulation’ since the 1990s. This paper, based on a comparison between China and India in the Information Technology (IT) industry, suggests that how the highly skilled leave the home country in the first place is equally important as how they return or contribute back through transnational connections. IT professionals’ migration from India with minimum government intervention may have more sustainable developmental effects than aggressive government programmes in China aimed at promoting return and transnational relations. This is because the migratory process of the Indian IT professionals is built into the dynamics of the global high-tech industry. By comparison, many programmes in China are dissociated from industry despite the heavy investment from the government. But the Chinese programmes may be more conducive for the development of basic research. In short, a proper mix of government policy and market mechanism seems a key to achieving sustainable brain circulation.
Notes
1. These documents include: the Buenos Aires Plan of Action adopted by the United Nations Conference on Technical Co-operation among Developing Countries in 1978, documents of the second Latin American Regional Preparatory Meeting for the United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development, held in Montevideo in December 1978, and the Vienna Programme of Action: United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development in 1979. See Pires (Citation1992).
2. Calculation based on data from the Ministry of Education (cited in Duan Citation2003) and Miao (Citation2003).
3. Interview with officials at State Council Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO) and Chinese Association for Applied Science and Technology. April and June, 2004, Beijing.
4. My China project was partly funded by the Asian Development Bank and was carried out in collaboration with the Chinese State Council Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO), the key governmental organ in charge of overseas Chinese affairs.
5. Tertiary education was high on Nehru's development agenda and as a result, the number of universities in India increased from 37 in 1950 to 129 in 1975, and engineering colleges increased from 58 to 179 over the same period (Krishna & Khadria Citation1997, p. 351). In the year 1970 alone, India granted about 120,000 degrees in science and engineering (p. 352). Modelled on MIT in the US, seven elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) were set up in different cities since 1950. IIT graduates became a major source of skilled migrants at latter stages.
6. In 1984, the new Indian Prime Minster, Rajiv Gandhi, passed the New Computer Policy immediately after going to office, which was followed by a Software Policy in 1986. These new policies simplified licensing procedures for software firms and opened up a new space for the development of domestic IT firms encouraging exports. See Evans (Citation1995), p. 6).
7. For how body shopping enables Indian IT professionals to move globally to benefit their career, see Xiang (Citation2004).
8. This price was much higher than that in Bangalore, see Times of India ( Citation2001 ).
9. The figure indicates that the Indian IT businesses overseas also include a high tier and a low tier. The high tier is more product oriented, typically based in Silicon Valley in the United States. The low tier is more service oriented, many being counterparts of body-shopping consultancies in India. The boundary between the high and low tier sectors overseas is less rigid than the one in India, and therefore I see all the firms overseas more or less as a single part in the system.
10. Interviews with Mr Chang Huizhou, former deputy head of the labour division of Shenyang International Economic and Technology Cooperation Ltd., 2 November 2005, Shenyang; 23 January 2006, Beijing.
11. Interview with the company owner, 28 June, 2005, Haitian Hotel, Qingdao, Shangdong province.
12. For a detailed review of the government policies and programmes, see Xiang (Citation2005).
13. Press release at the second session of Cooperation and Exchange Convention of Overseas Chinese Enterprise in Science and Technology Innovation, Shenyang, 20 July 2004.
14. Interview with an official from the Human Resources Branch, Zhongguancun Science and Technology Parks Management Committee. Thursday, 8 July 2004. Beijing.
