Benefits and challenges of the international mobility of researchers: the Chinese experience

ABSTRACT

Globalisation and the shift towards a knowledge economy have made researchers among the most sought-after resources. International research mobility has been encouraged at policy levels and has remarkably increased in the past decade. Meanwhile, concerns of policy makers about the possible loss of such human capital are also rapidly growing. This article reports major literature findings on the international mobility of researchers. It then examines China’s loss of researchers and how the country attempts to reverse the brain drain. It argues that China needs to reform its academic culture to lure back its best minds from overseas and retain them.

KEYWORDS:

• International mobility
• researchers
• diaspora
• brain drain
• globalisation
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Australian Research Council Discovery-Project Grant entitled ‘The Chinese Knowledge Diaspora and the International Knowledge Network: Australian and Canadian Universities Compared’ was undertaken by Professor Anthony Welch (University of Sydney) together with the author.

2. Its related projects included three doctoral studies conducted by Cai (2011), Hao (2012) and Zhang (2014) at the University of Sydney under the supervision of Professor Welch.

3. Although the movement of talented researchers from developing to developed countries remains serious, brain outflow also occurs among developing countries. For instance, South Africa bemoans its loss of researchers to other countries, whereas its neighbours complain about their loss of talents to South Africa (Teferra and Altbach 2004).

4. China shares a loss of its best researchers with other developing countries. However, considering that a major aim of this article is to assess China’s achievements and challenges in the implementation of its schemes to draw the best researchers to China, the focus here is on the developed world. The reason is that developed countries are firstly China’s rivals, and secondly, China can learn much from their experiences.

5. ISI stands for the International Science Index.

6. However, whenever possible, China is keen on all types of top researchers, regardless of their racial and cultural backgrounds. Thus far, talents recruited into China are overwhelmingly ethnic Chinese, but those of non-Chinese origins have begun to show interest in working in Chinese universities, research institutions and state-owned enterprises. By 2009, 223,000 foreigners were working in China with permits, although only a small percentage of them are top researchers (Wang 2012).

7. One example is Robert Glenn Parker who received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and was a professor at the University of Michigan. He is now based at Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University. Other examples include Ross Macallister, who became Chief Information Officer of Sinopec, a Fortune 500 company in China, and previously worked as a partner at Atos Consulting in the United Kingdom; and Mikhail Eremets, a German expert in high-voltage super conductors and now serves as a professor of Physics at the South China University of Technology.