The Reversed Brain Drain: A Mixed-method Study of the Reversed Migration of Chinese Overseas Scientists

Abstract

This article reviewed the Chinese policy and talent programmes after 1978 to reverse the historically brain drain of China. Under the current wave of reversed migration, Chinese overseas returned scientists and scholars have gradually changed the labour structure of Chinese academia. We used the dataset of the 2008 National Survey of Science and Technology Personnels, conducted by the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development (CASTED), to do quantitative analysis and comparison on the performances of overseas returnees and local scholars. It is found out that the overseas PhD returnees are still in short supply. Overseas returned scientists are generally better off in academic and innovative performances. Sizable qualitative interviews showed that even within the influx of overseas returnees, the labour market is also a social and political field that the social network and policy design would largely direct the flow of overseas returned scientists.

Introduction

SINCE THE LATE twentieth century, a global ‘knowledge economy’ has been gradually emerging where economic growth is intensely based on the production, distribution, diffusion, exchange and usage of knowledge and information (OECD, 1996). Science and technology (S&T) have been viewed as the primary engines of economic growth, while leading scientists and engineers represent key carriers of S&T knowledge. They are not only essential source of research capacity in science, but also a crucial economic asset spurring national development of their country. Countries in the developed Western world such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union etc. implemented types of immigration programmes or work visa to attract high educated talents globally (Abella, 2006; Beach, Green & Worswick, 2007; Miller, 1999; Wadsworth, 2010). Such skill flow would benefit these receiving countries in mitigating their talent shortage and promoting economic growth, but on the other hand, cause the problem of ‘brain drain’ to the sending countries, where most of them belonged to the developing world (Gill, 2005; Saxenian, 2005).

Scholars studying the globally skill flow are aware that ‘brain drain’ is detrimental to the interest of the sending countries but diverge in their opinion of the overall consequences. One camp of the scholars pointed out the negative effects of brain drain (Haque & Kim, 1995; Miyagiwa, 1991; Wong & Yip, 1999), and were further concerned with the international fairness of the brain drain and viewed it as a violation of justice if the welfare loss of the sending countries from the skilled migration were not properly compensated (Bhagwati, 1979; Dickson, 2003). The other camp of the scholars realised the benefits of skilled migration not only to the receiving countries but also to the home countries through the circulatory human capital and knowledge. In one way, the skilled emigrants could be considered as national talent pool of the home country. They can bring benefits to their home countries, such as remittances, returnees, technology transfer and foreign investment. In the other round, developing countries as China and Indian, are actively providing incentives to skilled expatriates to return home (Kapur & McHale, 2005; Xiang, 2003), which has in turn triggered a concern of ‘reverse brain drain’ in some host countries like the US (Heenan, 2005; Wadhwa et al., 2007). Brain drain can turn into a gain for developing countries, when its positive effects outweigh the negative ones. Skilled emigration should be viewed not as loss of talent, but an important means of development (Zhao, Drew, & Murray, 2000; Zweig, David, 2011).

Prior research in studying skilled migration generally focused on the macro level and the consequences of such flows from receiving or sending country perspectives (Gill, 2005; Kapur & McHale, 2005; Wadhwa et al., 2007; Xiang, 2003). However, little empirical attention has been paid to the micro and individual analysis of the incentives, the impact and the process of the migration, especially the more recent reversed migration (for notable exceptions, see McCormik & Wahba, 2001; Wahba & Zenou, 2012; Woodruff & Zenteno, 2007). McCormick and Wahba (2001) showed how the financial and social capital accumulation would influence the Egyptian returnees’ entrepreneurial activity. Woodruff and Zenteno (2007) used the case of Mexican returnees to understand the mechanisms in re-directing these national talents back to the country.

Our study in particular looked at the reversed migration of Chinese overseas talents. We carried out a mixed-method study in using both quantitative survey dataset and qualitative interviews to evaluate the social and political incentives of the reversed return, as well as the situation of the Chinese overseas returnees after their relocation back to China. We viewed the Chinese reversed migration as a complex issue with interactions among state policy, the local research entities and also individual scholars both trained overseas and domestic. Therefore, we devoted the research in incorporating both macro and micro level of the mechanisms in the reversed migration of Chinese scientists. In what follows, we would first introduce the background and trend of Chinese brain drain and the reversed migration, especially the policies and programmes of Chinese government on brain drain period and its effort in re-attracting its overseas talents. Then we would introduce the data and method used in the empirical analysis. In the following section, we would raise series of empirical questions such as how did the overseas returnees perform in Chinese academia compared to their domestic counterparts, what are the social and political mechanisms of their return, etc. In the end, we would conclude the issue with certain policy implications.

China’s Post-1978 Policy and Talent Programmes in Attracting Overseas Chinese Scientists

China had experienced terms of ‘brain drain’ (Tang & Shapira, 2010), as their top students went abroad but few returned. In the post-1978 era, with its economic reform and urgent need of leading scientists and engineers, Chinese government has changed its attitude and focus towards high-quality overseas trained personnel. In the start of Chinese reform in 1978, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, has realised that sending out students for foreign training was an important first step to enhance Chinese science, technology and education. Deng was not too much worried about possible ‘brain drain’, he mentioned that even if 100 of the 1,000 students sent out did not return, there would still be 900 left (Jiang, 2003). With the support attitude of Chinese government in overseas training, there were over 3,000 students and scholars sent to Western institutions between 1978 and 1979, which marked the beginning of the ‘open-door’ policy (Cao, 2008). In 1981, self-funded (zifei) overseas study was permitted. During 1978 to the early 1989, the Chinese government was mostly positive towards overseas study. They believed that even possible brain drain coming with the Chinese students going overseas was to ‘store brainpower overseas’, which would be utilised for China’s development eventually (Zweig & Chen, 1995).

The Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 thwarted the Chinese state initiatives in overseas study and also the returning of Chinese overseas students. Immediately after the incident, China started to impose restrictions on overseas study requiring the fresh graduated students to serve the country for a few years before they were allowed to go overseas. In the meantime, the Chinese overseas students were afraid of collateral consequences of political instability in China and chose to change their non-immigrant status to permanent residency, especially when the other Western countries issued certain advantageous policies to provide protect to Chinese overseas students, for instance, US government issued executive order of Chinese Student Protection Act to provide permanent residency to Chinese working and studying in the US. In this era, both the number of students going overseas and returning dropped.

However, Chinese government resumed its liberalisation and open-door policy not long after the Tiananmen Incident. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping reaffirmed the intention of promoting overseas study and welcoming returned scientists. He assured the overseas Chinese students that the government would not trace any liability of the overseas students in their political attitude at the time of Tiananmen. After 1992, returnees were guaranteed more job mobility, favourable conditions on passport renewal and family relocation. Chinese President Jiang Zemin took a bigger step in luring the overseas Chinese talents. He stated that China would warmly welcome overseas Chinese nationals to support and help Chinese modernisation in various ways. A well-known policy slogan of ‘supporting overseas study, encouraging return and allowing people freedom to come and go’ manifested Chinese government’s strong will in attracting the overseas students. The policy emphasis even changed from ‘return to serve the country’ to a more liberal attitude ‘serve the country’ in order to include the Chinese students remaining overseas. Even if they did not return, they were considered to be China’s national asset, which would benefit the nation in the long run.

With the increasing liberalisation of Chinese state policy towards overseas study and Chinese overseas trained talent, various programmes and public policies were introduced to reverse the brain drain. To financially fund the overseas study and ensure the return, the Chinese Scholarship Council launched special funding programme to sponsor certain number of their high academic population who get admissions of Western institutions for PhD training or postdoctoral positions. Whoever got the funding are required to sign a contract with the Council to promise coming back to China right after they got the degree or finished their research agenda. Jeopardising the contract will cost about 100,000 to 200,000 RMB and also ruined the reputation of their sponsors. In addition, Chinese government also initiated various talent programmes to re-attract the leading scientists and professionals overseas. During early 1990s, the Ministry of Education of China (MOE) launched a programme of Scientific Research Foundation for returned overseas Chinese scholars, which stated that overseas returnees can apply for the fund after two years of work in China. The National Science Foundation of China also launched both ‘Special Fund for Chinese Students Studying Abroad’ and ‘Specific Fund for Chinese Scholars Abroad Returning for Short Period of Work or Lecture’ to encourage reversed migration of Chinese scholars.

Since mid-1990s, the programme of ‘One Hundred’ at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) recruited high level scientists from abroad who are under the age of 45, with an offer of 2 million RMB for three years, including funding for research, a housing subsidy and salary (Cao, 2008). Up to 2002, a total of 716 overseas returned scholars have been funded by the ‘One Hundred’ programme. At the same time, the Ministry of Personnel initiated ‘the Hundred, Thousand, and Ten Thousand’ talent programme which have funded the initial research work of over 10,000 outstanding Chinese overseas returned scientists by the year of 2003. The Cheung Kong Scholar Program at the Ministry of Education and the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) also targeted at recruiting leading Chinese scientists from abroad and awarding them funding for starting up labs, recruiting students and setting up research. These talent programmes greatly improved the research condition for the returning scientists and narrowed the salary gap between foreign and domestic academic positions. Meanwhile, at the regional and university level, a number of provincial and municipal governments provided favourable conditions to attract overseas returnees, such as the start-up fund, housing subsidy, childcare and the special policy for hukou, which is a mandatory household registration system in China.

Domestic universities not only have actively recruited overseas Chinese scholars from the developed world, but also invited them for short visits, in order to take advantage of its massive scientific diaspora. With the returning flow of its overseas high academic labour, a few top Chinese universities, for instance Peking University, Tsinghua University, Shanghai University of Economic and Finance, Fudan University and Shanghai Jiaotong Universities, etc., started to implement an dual track system in order to manage the overseas returnees and local scholars separately, which adopted the US tenure track promotion system with the overseas returned scholars, provided increased salaries and funding and more academic freedom to the overseas returnees. The overseas returned scholars in the tenure track system usually have their salaries 2–3 times more than the local scholars in the same department. Other universities not under the dual track system designed different policies in attracting overseas returnees. They reduced the time requirement for the overseas returned PhD to be promoted to associate professor, or used postdoctoral programme to gain access to the scholars and granted a fast promotion track to them after finishing the postdoctoral programme. Chinese universities also competed with each other to attract overseas scientists, and provided them with favourable conditions, such as suitable working platform, research funds, housing and high salary.

The Chinese overseas talents are attracted by the rapidly growing economy and lured back by increased salaries and special funding from the China’s talent programmes targeting outstanding returnees. China also peered in its research and development (R&D) investment, for instance, from the data provided by the National Bureau of Statistics, China spent 245 billion yuan (30.6 billion US dollars) on R&D in 2005, a rise of 24.6 per cent more than in 2004, which created strong demand of outstanding engineers and scientists to involve in the key industrial development sectors of China. The improved research and innovation system also contribute to the attraction of these overseas scientists and engineers. Due to these reasons, the number of returnee scientists has also been increasing at a high rate since the late 1990s. Table 1 gave out the number of students leaving and returning published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) from year 1978 to 2013. There were also high profile cases of such reversed migration. For instance, Dr Yigong Shi, who was a renowned overseas Chinese scientist with American citizenship and had stayed in the US for eighteen years, shocked his colleagues at Princeton University by returning to China in 2009. As a world-leading scientist of cell studies, Shi resigned from Princeton and took the position of the dean of the School of Life Sciences at Tsinghua University (Lafraniere, 2010). The returning of such outstanding scientists would help to improve the scientific system and overall academic environment of China.

TABLE 1

Chinese Students Leaving for Overseas and Returning Each Year, 1978–2013

Year	Number of Students Leaving	Number of Students Returning	Ratio of Returnees to Leaving Students (%)
1978	860	248	28.8
1979	1777	231	18.2
1980	2124	162	13.5
1981	2922	1143	23.2
1982	2326	2116	39.0
1983	2633	2303	49.1
1984	3073	2290	54.0
1985	4888	1424	48.1
1986	4676	1388	44.7
1987	3073	2290	54.0
1988	3786	3000	47.1
1989	3329	1753	47.6
1990	2950	1593	48.1
1991	2900	2069	49.6
1992	6540	3611	50.4
1993	10742	5128	49.9
1994	19071	4230	43.3
1995	20381	5750	40.2
1996	20905	6570	38.7
1997	22410	7130	37.6
1998	17622	7379	38.1
1999	23749	7748	37.4
2000	38989	9121	34.9
2001	83973	12243	29.4
2002	125179	17945	25.0
2003	117307	20152	23.3
2004	114682	24726	23.0
2005	118515	34987	24.0
2006	134000	42000	25.1
2007	144000	44000	30.6
2008	179800	69300	38.5
2009	229300	108300	47.2
2010	284700	134800	47.3
2011	339700	186200	46.6
2012	399600	272900	68.3
2013	413900	353500	85.4

Source: National Bureau of Statistics.

As a response to the issue of reversed migration of Chinese overseas talents, our study is devoted to use empirical data to achieve better understanding of the facts, incentives, consequences and effects of the migration of scientists in particular. The process of reversed migration was embedded within the interaction of state policy, the organisations and individual choices. We will specifically explore that as more and more Chinese overseas students and scholars returned, how they interacted with the organisations for job attainment, career promotions, academic productivity, as well as how the national talent programmes and policies intervened in this brain circulation of China; whereas the organisations and individuals also developed their own ways to interpret and manage such governmental policies.

Data and Methods

We conducted a mixed-method study to examine current situation of the reversed migration of Chinese scientists and scholars. The quantitative dataset is based on the 2008 National Survey of Science and Technology Personnels, conducted by Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development (CASTED). The population of interest in the survey was the staff and personnel working as scientific researchers, engineers, technicians, scientific management and teaching staff in Chinese universities, research institutions, industrial corporate and research oriented hospitals in the country wide. The national survey used the random sampling methods in first selecting 209 units of (S&T) personnel investigation units. Among these units, systematic random sampling was utilised to select the eligible respondents. In total, there were 32,100 questionnaires being sent out, with 30,078 being collected as eligible cases. The response rate was 93.7 per cent. As our study is focused on the overseas returned scholars working in research institutions and universities, we further selected the sample according to the occupations and working institutions of the respondents and narrowed it down to 7,907 subjects with 1,079 overseas returned scholars. According to the survey, they have all been working as academic researchers in the past three years. The survey questionnaire collected performance information on academic performances, patent inventions and scientific reward in the most recent 3 years of individual respondents, which allowed us to compare the scientific and academic productivity of overseas and domestic scholars. The survey also had questions towards the overseas returned scholars on the types of their overseas experiences (overseas visiting, PhD training, Post-doc experience, etc.), level of degree (overseas PhD, MA, etc.), location of overseas experiences, year of return, etc.

To supplement the survey dataset and reveal the mechanisms of the reversed scientists flow on individual, organisational and state level, we also conducted sizable face-to-face semi-structured interviews with Chinese scholars and working staff around Chinese universities and research institutions. The interviews included the hiring authority and administrative staff, the domestic scholars trained in China and overseas returnees for job positions in Chinese academia. Our qualitative interview subjects consisted of 41 cases. Their ages range from 30 to 54. The sample included 28 overseas-returned PhD, 7 domestic trained scholars, 6 administrative staff and government officials, which ensured the diversity of educational experiences, occupational role and career track of the sample. Each interview took between 45 minutes and 1 hour, at a date, time and location selected by the interview subject. During the interview, subjects were expected to answer questions about their job searching experiences, career advancement, research work, their overseas experiences, details in their returning process etc. The interviews during the fieldwork were tape-recorded and transcribed along with the analytical memos and field notes as the basics of qualitative analysis.

Findings

1. Qualitative analysis of the performances of overseas returned versus domestic scholars

We used the quantitative survey data to evaluate the composition of our sample and compare across the overseas and domestic scholars in their academic and innovative performances. It is necessary to introduce here the definitions we used to identify the two groups. According to the official definition from the Service Center for Scholarly Exchange of Ministry of Education of China, ‘overseas returnee’ is defined as ‘individual who has been to foreign research institutions for over one year, with the experiences of formal education, scholarly visit, researching, working, student exchange, training, etc.’ We also noticed that the common practice of the international organisations also adopted a 12-month cut-off convention to separate ‘migrant’ from ‘visitors’ (Tani, 2008). Therefore, this study analysed overseas stay for at least a year and identified the overseas returned scientists in the sample as having over one year overseas experiences of either state or self funded study, scholarly visit or exchange, research, working, as well as corporate training.

Composition of the Returned Scientists in the Sampling Subjects

Reflecting from Table 2, we found that among the overseas returnees in our sample, nearly 50 per cent went abroad were state-financed, 23.6 per cent were with own expenses and 21.6 per cent counted as short-term exchange. 64 per cent of the sample did not have overseas degrees, and only 188 people in the sample achieved overseas doctoral degrees, accounting for only 17 per cent of the total sample. The results stated that within the portfolio of the overseas returned scientists in China, most of them were categorised as short-term exchange, while those who held doctoral degree with long-term working experience in scientific research were still the minority. Overseas returnees generally got back from the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong/Macao/Taiwan and other countries and regions of the world, we have divided these areas into three categories: North America, which includes the United States and Canada; Europe; and Pan-Asia Pacific Rim, including Australia, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong/Macao/Taiwan and Singapore. The sample essentially showed equilibrium of the overseas returnees from the three regions. Sixty-six per cent of the scientists in the sample studied abroad for 1 to 2 years, matching the 64 per cent of no degree overseas study, which indicated that the most of the overseas returnees have relatively short experiences abroad, counted as short-term exchange category. The pattern of the returning time track indicated that there were peaks of scientists returning in year 1994, 1998 and 2006.

TABLE 2

Descriptive Statistics of Overseas Returned Scientists

Variables	Measurement	Frequencies	Valid %
	State-funded	484	46.9
	Self-funded	244	23.6
	Short-term exchange	223	21.6
	Corporate training	8	0.8
	Others	73	7.1
Overseas degree	No degree	640	64.8
	BA	20	2.0
	MA	58	5.9
	PhD	188	19.0
	Postdoc	37	3.7
	Others	44	4.5
Location of foreign experience	North America	362	33.5
	Europe	329	30.5
	Pan-Asia	370	34.3
	Others	18	1.7
Duration of overseas staying	1–2 years	665	66.1
	3–7 years	291	28.9
	7–10 years	29	2.9
	10 years above	20	2.0
Year of return	1962–1989	59	6.0
	1990–2000	324	32.8
	2001–2008	606	61.3
Gender	Male = 0	813	75.6
	Female = 1	263	24.4
Administrative position	No administrative position	623	58.8
	General management role	132	12.5
	Mid-level management	262	24.7
	Upper-level management	42	4.0
Tenure	Junior	18	1.7
	Middle	150	13.9
	Associate	322	29.8
	Full	566	52.5
	Not in the tenure track	17	1.6

Source: Author’s Analysis.

In Table 2, we have also specifically looked into the observation of scientists’ gender, title and administrative title as a description of demographic features of the sample. Among the respondents, 75 per cent were men and 25 per cent women. Meantime, high-level administrative title in Chinese universities usually brings more leverage and resources. When we looked at the differences in the proportion of the administrative posts of domestic and overseas returned scholars, we found that the overseas returnees carried higher ratio of senior positions. While in the distribution of academic titles, nearly 80 per cent of the overseas returnees currently hold ‘associate professor’ or ‘full professor’ titles, such output shows that overseas returnees are at high level positions in general.

Academic Performances of Overseas Returned versus Domestic Scholars

In order to compare the academic and innovative performances of domestic and overseas returned scholars, Table 3 gave the indicators in academic publications, patents and science/technology rewards, as well as t-test results to verify the significance of the differences. We have observed, that there were 13 of total academic publications from the overseas returned scientists within the past 3 years, among which, 6.09 of SCI/EI publications in average, and 7.06 of national academic journal paper publications, relatively balanced in domestic and foreign journal publications. As for the patents and science/technology awards, the average patents of overseas returnees were 0.08–1.12, and average less than 1 in national and provincial (S&T) awards. At the same time, in all aspects of academic and innovative performances, overseas returnees were significantly better than local scholars. Compared with local scholars, overseas returnees doubled the number of academic papers, with even more advantages in SCI/EI publications. Overseas returnees have published 6 SCI/EI papers in average of the past three years, as a comparison, local scholars had only 1.58 SCI/EI papers published. On the Chinese domestic publications, the average number of papers of overseas returnees was four more than that of local scholars. We have observed that in types of inventional, practical and overseas patents, overseas returnees still occupied significant advantages. In the number of science/technology awards, overseas returnees performed significantly better than local scholars, while such advantage was even more obvious in the national level rewards, but relatively closer in provincial level of rewards.

TABLE 3

Comparison of Academic Performances of Overseas and Domestic Scientists

	Overseas Returnees			Domestic Scholars			T-test
	Means	SD	N	Means	SD	N	t
Total publication	13.21	16.499	1046	6.01	8.030	6198	13.842***
SCI/EI publication	6.09	8.790	946	1.58	3.729	5254	15.509***
Chinese journal publication	7.06	12.342	945	3.27	5.365	5642	9.277***
Total of patents	1.12	2.589	964	0.44	1.357	5711	7.931***
Inventional patents	0.79	2.255	945	0.28	0.998	5636	6.811***
Practical patents	0.34	0.954	904	0.17	0.761	5597	5.289***
Overseas patents	0.08	.555	859	0.01	.206	5474	3.656***
Total of S/T rewards	0.90	1.424	962	0.59	1.250	5752	6.353***
National S/T rewards	0.18	0.637	852	0.06	0.344	5372	5.633***
Provincial S/T rewards	0.68	1.018	952	0.42	0.876	5715	7.318***

Source: Author’s Analysis.

Notes: *** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; *p < 0.05.

2. Qualitative exploration of social and political mechanisms of returning migration

Our interviews assisted in understanding why and how the overseas Chinese talents would return. As a guanxi based society with its local politics, social and political mechanisms greatly impacted the process of each Chinese scientist’s reversed migration, which even override the economic incentives coming from growing Chinese economy. Neil Fligstein established the political–cultural approach, which considered market is to be stabilised within sets of institutions and rules (2001). Since collective actors in the market field would try to produce a system of domination, a local and political culture was then needed to define the social relations between actors. Following the logics of Fligstein’s theory, we used qualitative analysis to find the underlying mechanisms of social and political contexts in generating the reversed migration.

The Effect of Social Networks in the Relocation of Overseas Returnees

Students who went abroad for their education not only returned to China with expertise and skills as forms of human capital, they also established important connections to a community of international scholars (Ynalvez & Shrum, 2011). In the meanwhile, research also showed that the existing connections within Chinese academia were one of the incentives for the Chinese overseas scholars to return (Zweig et al., 2004). Returnee scientists acted as a conduit in bridging the international and Chinese local scientific community. They tended to play an important role in knowledge diffusion through their international networks, personal interactions and joint research projects with both overseas and domestic scholars (Acker, 2005; Davenport, 2004; Meyer, Kaplan & Charun, 2001). Zweig et al. (2004) compared Chinese overseas returnees in academia and how they interacted with local scholars. According to their study, returning scientists usually occupied less advantageous positions in their local social networks but have greater international collaborative opportunities and funding resources than local scholars.

It is necessary to introduce the idea of guanxi in order to examine the local social structure of Chinese academia. Chinese society is considered to be operating within webs of guanxi, which refers to ‘interpersonal connections that facilitate exchange of favors between people on a dyadic basis’ (Bian, 1997, p. 984). The concept of guanxi highlights the importance of trust, obligations, and reciprocity in Chinese people’s interactions, which pervades every aspects of Chinese society. Guanxi is not only considered as forms of network, but also a form of social organisations, especially in the situation of China that the absence of a formal labour market usually induces people to rely on networks of strong ties and mutual trust to retain job mobility (Bian, 2005). Chinese scientific/technology and academic sector was also constructed on guanxi networks, which facilitated trust among individual scholars and in turn promoted trustworthy institutional environment for the actors. When asked about the practice of guanxi in the Chinese university and academia, all 41 interviewed subjects admitted the significance of guanxi in Chinese academia and the broad Chinese society. One informant, who was a full professor in sociology department of a key university, mentioned that with his 15-year working experience in Chinese academia, he was fully aware the practice of managing human relations was important part of professional work. He commented: The rules in China is not fully developed, there are lots of spaces for human manipulation. Chinese society, including Chinese academia is essentially an arena through which interpersonal relations are acting on.²

Admitting the significance of Chinese guanxi, most professors and administrative staffs have mentioned that existence of guanxi helped to convey and confirm trust among the actors.

When hiring, we would prefer people who are easy to get along, able to be trust in the department, since the academic job is permanent that we could not fire people, and we do not want to risk having someone we don’t get along to be here. ³

One informant acting in the role of the department heads mentioned the merits of potential job candidates are not sole criteria in hiring, their personality and loyalty sometimes would override their research ability when it comes to their job placement.⁴

One of the interviewed professors, who was a tenured track professor in a graduate school of United States then returned to China for his career, mentioned that after he went to overseas, he still retained relationship with the Chinese university where he got his undergraduate degree. He himself also had deep emotional attachment with the Chinese university where he was educated. Then when chances came that his ‘motherhood’ university offered him position and invited him to return to China, he was more than happy to be back. When asked about whether he would accept offer from other universities, he mentioned that I would not accept other university’s offer; I feel it is an obligation to work for my motherhood university and contribute to it. The scholar mentioned how the motherhood university educated him in a fundamental way, which has changed his life path in leaving his small town, going overseas and attaining high education. He also mentioned that the peer group he met in college was the best relational ties both from emotional and career support. He emphasised on the gratitude he had for the motherhood university, which assisted in generating the self-identified obligation to work for it.⁵ Similarly, another overseas returned scholar working in his own undergraduate college mentioned that it is relatively easier to get a job in the motherhood university because of previous acquaintances, which also made working in the institution easier when they relocated back to China.⁶

From the stories, we could tell that guanxi was acting as a pulling factor and catalyst in re-attracting overseas returnees back to China, and the underlying mechanism of such effect was based on the exchange of favours and establishment of emotional attachment. As Bian (1997) mentioned that the core nature of guanxi network is to exchange of favours, the interviews revealed that not only the returning behaviour, but also the participation of overseas Chinese scholars in Chinese domestic research activity was under the motivation of the obligated exchange of favours. For the overseas Chinese scientists, they felt it was an ‘obligation’ to collaborate with previous mentors and colleagues in China, temporary visit to China for research, or even return China for permanent positions. One of the professors commented: Personal relationship is a great motivation of me returning to China, I am willing to work with people I know back in college, and it is even better that I could return to my old school to work.⁷ He got his Ph.D. in the US and returned to China in 2008 to the same institution where he got his bachelor degree.

Our interviews also revealed that the Chinese guanxi network could facilitate trust among people, which is rather essential in the Chinese academia. The subjects were common in mentioning that they are more willing to work with people they are familiar. One of the subjects mentioned: I am more able to listen when the opinion is from people I know better and could trust.⁸ Therefore, the overseas returnees been placed through the domestic guanxi would be more easily to be accepted into the department.

A great portion of the subjects mentioned that their mentors, colleagues and friendship relations in China assisted in their relocation back to China. The relations either acted as a conduit for information of position, or as strong recommendation for the job searchers. When asked about how they find their current position. Several repeatedly occurring answers are as following:

My advisor back in China told me the position and he strongly recommended me to the department; ⁹ I have been working the research team of this department back in college, I knew people here, so when I showed interest in returning, I was welcomed; ¹⁰ I knew the head of the department through one of my classmates back in college; I was a good match for the department, so I returned; ¹¹ I knew professor X when he was in Japan visiting, he invited me to work in his department, I am more than willing to return. ¹²

For all the intention manifested in the interview, almost all of the scholars knew someone or heard from someone or recommended by someone as their first step in returning China. When probed about why they relied so much on their personal acquaintances for job searching, one of the informants complained about the inefficient of university website for job opening. The scholars mentioned that the job posts were usually out of date, ambiguous, without complete information or really slow and unclear to apply.¹³

We also observed that reflecting from the perspective of the hiring universities as the demand side of the high academic labour, guanxi and trust was also one of the hiring facilities’ key considerations. When asked to list the criteria in hiring, a hiring process was depicted as the following:

Usually the departments who had vacancies or were in need of new people in team were required to report their needs to the human resources department of the university level. The university will need to go through certain administrative processes to distribute the openings to the department that was applying. The president of the university needed to sign on and approve the job openings for that year. Then each department will put the job openings on websites and started the interview process, assessing resumes, job talking, and then deciding on the job offer. ¹⁴

The professor mentioned that it is usually the case that the department already got satisfying candidates to hire, either their own excellent graduates or some candidates who were already connected to the department, the department then started to apply for the opening approval on the university level. When probing into how the right person was decided, several labels were consistently mentioned, their own Ph.D. student, post doc student in the department, overseas returnee who got strong background and recommendation, their own student who pursued overseas Ph.D. or post doc training and wanted to come back, renowned overseas scholars.

It was widely accepted that although the Western education was more advanced, the returnees were still in lack of the domestic social capital and cultural capital that was necessary in China. One informant working as dean of his department called for the returnees to localize as soon as possible.¹⁵ They just have little knowledge about how things are managed in China. The other scholars in the sample were also aware of the difficulties of overseas returnees in re-adapting to Chinese social culture, however,

they also got their advantage, they were better trained, having overseas resources, they would be promoted really fast if they cultivated their overseas connections and in the meantime, had a good relationship with domestic scientific community. They could sit on two strong laps. Such metaphor is been made.¹⁶

The Impacts of State Power and Policy Design to the Overseas Returnees

The sector of Chinese academia and the corresponding labour market remained to be under the political control of the central government in certain ways even though China tried to liberalise its education after 1978. Resources in research, funding and the quota in hiring were all required to be approved by the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Personnel before being distributed to the individual universities. Market was still bounded by the state power as Fligstein (2001) claimed that government regulation served as one of the market institution that stabilised relations in the market. With the inflow of the Chinese overseas returned scholars, Chinese government and state power played an important role in re-attracting its overseas talent, which shifted the structure and composition of the labour market. The state was not taking a ‘backseat role’ in its labour circulation globally, but made a great effort in the process of sending and bringing its high tech academic labour back to the country. On the state level, policies and talent programmes were designed in order to attract the brilliant brains, such as Chunhui Plan, the Yangtze River Scholar Plan, the Hundred Talents Program, and the National Distinguished Young Scholar Plan. Ministry of Education in its 2004 yearbook mentioned ‘returnee scientists represented 78% of the presidents of universities under the direct control of the Ministry of Education, 63% of doctoral supervisors, and 72% of the directors of the national and provincial key labs in the early 2000s. One of the government staff mentioned that now a lot more of the university professors and doctoral students were sent abroad for knowledge exchange and academic visits.¹⁷

Scholars were mostly concerned with the effectiveness of these state and local policies in attracting high quality returnees, Simon and Cao (2009) found that despite some satisfactory cases, such as the One Hundred Talent Program, the governmental policy programmes had only limited success in bringing back the productive and prestigious scholars with both foreign degree and working experiences (Simon & Cao, 2009, p. 240). In regard to the prestigious of the overseas graduate programme, China only attracted limited number of emigrant scientists who were degree holders of the top 200 universities in the world by the year of 2006 (Tian, 2011).

From our fieldwork interviews, the younger interview subjects who returned to China after their PhD graduation had mostly identical feelings about the limited influence from the policies in attracting and relocating them back to the Chinese academia. One informant who was 30 years old and returned after his completion of PhD training commented that it was difficult for most Chinese to get tenure-track promotion in the Western institutions within the economic downturn of the developed world, and that was why he preferred to return to Chinese academia.¹⁸ The other sociology professor around 35 years old mentioned that the peer pressure coming from his classmates and colleagues in pursuing overseas study and returning to China influenced him a lot in his career choices.¹⁹ The other faculty at mathematics research centre claimed that his return was also due to failure in getting a tenure track position in the US and how he attempted to be on the labour market worldwide and China seems to be a more rational choice.²⁰

The scholars, especially the foreign degree owners who returned right after their graduation reflected on their intentions to leave and return China and believed it to be more of personal choices and less influenced by policy programmes.

I felt there was not too much policy help offered to me after I came back; there were a few initial funding for returnees at first, but later I was on my own. ²¹ What was most helpful for me was the identity as a returnee. I had chances to collaborate with my advisor in the US while his reputation helped me a lot. The identity as a returnee had some benefits in promotion, but still it was limited. There was little policy help. I had to put my roots down as soon as possible. I was so lucky that the dean here supported my relocation and research a lot. ²²

There were some institutional supports guaranteed to the general population of the foreign degree holders, for example, the policies of hukou²³ relocation for returnees, which solved the sustainability problem after relocation. One informant commented:

although the settling in hukou is still very slow and cumbersome, it is already much easier for us as high academic intellectual. Settling hukou in the big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai is becoming such a difficult problem for most of the people. ²⁴

Most of the overseas students usually sent their hukou back to their birth place or kept it temporary at the service centre for overseas students in each city before leaving the country. The early emigrating population even had their hukou cancelled or lost because of their long period of staying overseas. To re-attract the overseas-educated brains of China, the hukou policy started to indicate that the overseas returnees with more than one year education experience and diploma in the overseas institutions can relocate and re-register their hukou to any cities where they were hired. The policy also stated that the returnees with missing hukou can re-register for household registration at the place of their previous hukou. To attract the high tech personnel overseas, universities and research institution are usually granted with priority in registering hukou for its employees, which is faster than returnees directing to industry or corporation for work.

The interview subjects claimed that the hukou policy was still cumbersome, however, it enabled them to sustain on Chinese labour market and every other part of their living, including their children’s education and spouse benefit. One informant mentioned it took a whole year for the official hukou document to be approved, and the process was depressing for him.²⁵ The other overseas PhD returnee, who had returned to China and worked on current position for several months, was not able to get paycheck and sign official employment contract with the university because of the slow process of hukou settling. It might still take a couple of months. And policy toward hukou settling for academics is already the easiest and fastest way.²⁶

In regard to academic funding to overseas returnees, one informant working as administrative staff in the Ministry of Education described the Chinese universities and research institutions were now inflated with the influx of returnees.²⁷ As more and more Chinese scientists with foreign educational and working experiences competed to return to China for work, the initial favourable conditions to lure overseas talents back home narrowed its focus to outstanding foreign degree holders who had long working experiences and usually promoted to tenured professor in Western institutions in the fields in which China was lagging behind. One informant working for the NSFC commented on the effectiveness and condition of re-attracting overseas returnees.

Universities also competed with each other to attract overseas scientists, and provided with favorable conditions, but now these benefits were more designed toward the outstanding talents who already established their reputation overseas. Their professional ability and productivity was already proven in overseas institutions. Young fresh Ph.D. returnees were under less favorable condition as there were fewer resources designed toward them. ²⁸

The policy programmes in China in re-attracting their overseas talents moved beyond the distinctions between overseas returnees and domestic PhD. It differentiated the Chinese scholars and designed separate treatment according to the trajectories of their overseas stay, for instance, overseas visiting scholars, overseas degree holders and overseas returnees with tenure track working experiences. Resources were more utilised to attract the overseas returnees with long time working experiences in foreign institutions. One of the scholars came back from a prestigious US sociology department recommended a better path for newly graduated PhD: if you really want to come back to China, get an assistant professor position in US and work for several years. Your condition will be totally different.²⁹

There were limitations of the policy as well. One of the full professors mentioned that the social relations and dynamics between returnees and domestic scholars would generate segmentations in the scientific community in China. This was especially the case if the policy benefit rendered the domestic scholars to view the returned scholars with suspicion and jealousy, especially when returnees’ contribution does not match their special treatment from the nation (Xin, 2006). Simply being an overseas returnee would place the scholar into faster promotion track, which would violet the meritocratic standard in distributing resources of scientific community. At some point in time, policymaker in China will want to redesign the current programmes targeting at certain returnee group in order to treat all of its research personnel with fairness.

Conclusions

Our study is situated within the contexts of Chinese transitional economy and the reversed migration of Chinese overseas PhD and scholars, which makes the research with plenty of theoretical and practical meanings. Chinese government has implemented various policies and talent programmes to re-attract their overseas nationals and reverse the historical brain drain after its economic reform in 1978. Chinese labour market is influxed with its overseas returned students and scholars, especially the high academic labour immigrating back into the universities and research institutions, which fundamentally changed the structure and composition of Chinese academia. These overseas returned PhD and leading scientists are carriers of cutting-edge knowledge and their reversed immigration will make major contributions to the progress of science and education in China.

Within such background, our study took a top-down perspective in exploring the issue of Chinese brain drain to brain circulation and tried to bridge the macro and micro analysis of the issue. We first reviewed the period of brain drain and the various policy changes happened during this era. Then we used national survey data to look into the composition and performances of overseas returnees compared with the local counterparts. It was found out that the return rate of foreign PhD degree holders remained at a low level, though at an increasing rate. Meanwhile, Chinese domestic trained scientists managed to acquire overseas experiences by short-term working or visiting programmes, which constituted largest portion of Chinese overseas returnees. The composition of the Chinese returned scientists and the variability of their overseas experiences became rather mixed and complex. Therefore, we not only looked at the performances disparities between overseas returned PhD and domestic scholars, but also delved into the social and political mechanisms in luring the overseas talent to return. We managed to evaluate how the changing institutional environment of Chinese academia in the contexts of globalisation have set separate constraints on Chinese scholars according to their levels of overseas experiences.

Except for the economic incentives from Chinese economic growth in re-attracting the overseas Chinese, the social and political mechanisms also shifted the pattern of brain drain. It was found out that Chinese forms of network influenced both the hiring institutions and the individual scholars in regard to ‘who would be the right returnee to hire’. The undeveloped market structure and the barriers of information flow helped to retain the importance of social network, especially the strong cohesive guanxi in facilitating trust among individual participants in the market, where we found out abundant evidences of both the hiring universities and the job searching individuals using networks for job information, referral, hiring and professional promotion. Guanxi is acting as a reliable bridge between the supply and demand sides of the Chinese academic labour market and conveys the idea of trust and loyalty.

In evaluating the power dynamics of Chinese academic labour market, it was found out that the strong control by state power and policy was still salient in this sector of labour market. The bureaucratic state not only has sets of policies to re-attract their brilliant brains to facilitate the brain circulation globally; it also distinguishes scholars according to their extent of overseas experiences and promotes unequal treatment among the Chinese scientific communities. In the meantime, it also strictly controls who and when universities could hire by the quota and hukou allocation to the university. All of the facts about state power demonstrate that the marketisation of Chinese high education and labour market is less developed compared to what the transitional economy expected. The political party and state still retains its power in controlling the dynamics of the labour market in hiring, promotion and allocation of research resources.

The study makes a contribution to the research literature on labour migration, labour market and transitional society. This study is the first to examine Chinese international labour flow with both historical and empirical perspectives. This article is aware of the salience of social and political mechanisms on the labour market. It would make a contribution to the literature on academic labour market by its findings that the performances, the social networks and the political conditions in the labour market differed according to local and expatriate scholars. Finally, this study is one of the first research that examined labour market for high academic labour in a transitional economic and institutional environment. Therefore, we would claim a contribution to the labour market research literature on transitional economies.

There are also several limitations of the study. My data is limited under the methodological frame. For example, the survey is limited to 2008 and year before. It only collected performances data on a three-year time line. The interview subjects are mainly from universities and research institutions, which left out the overseas returnees to research departments of industrial corporations. The uniqueness of our cultural and labour market setting and the limitation of data ask for cautions in generalisation of the results. This could also constitute a shortcoming. Further work could be done on extending the empirical findings to other cultural, industrial or organisational-specific settings.

Footnotes

Notes

References

Abella

Manolo

(2006). Global competition for skilled workers and consequences. In Kuptsch

& Pang

Eng Fong

(Eds), Competing for global talent (pp. 11–32). Geneva: International Labour Organization.

Ackers

Louise

. (2005). Moving people and knowledge: Scientific mobility in the European Union. International Migration, 43(5), 99–131.

Beach

Charles M.

, Green

Alan G.

and Worswick

Christopher

. (2007). Impacts of the point system and immigration policy levers on skill characteristics of Canadian immigrants. Research in Labor Economics, 27, 349–401.

Bhagwati

J.N.

(1979). International migration of the highly skilled: Economics, Ethics and Taxes. Third World Quarterly, 1(3), 17–30.

Bian

Yanjie

. (1997). Bringing strong ties back in: Indirect ties, network bridges, and job searches in China. American Sociological Review, 62(3), 366–385.

Bian

Yanjie

(2005). Guanxi . In Beckert

& Zafirovski

(Eds), International encyclopedia of economic sociology (pp. 312–314). New York: Routledge Ltd.

Cao

Cong

. (2008). China’s brain drain at the high end. Asian Population Studies, 4(3), 331–345.

Davenport

Sally

. (2004). Panic and panacea: Brain drain and science and technology human capital policy. Research Policy, 33(4), 617–630.

Dickson

David

. (2003, May 29). Mitigating the brain drain is a moral necessity. Science and Development Network. Retrieved from http://www.scidev.net/en/news/china-launches-campaign-to-boost-local-journals.html. accessed on 29 May 2003 .

10.

Fligstein

Neil

. (2001). The architecture of markets: An economic sociology of twenty-first-century capitalistic societies. New Jersey, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

11.

Gill

Bryony

. (2005). Homeward bound? The experience of return mobility for Italian scientists. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 18(3), 319–341.

12.

Haque

Nadeem U.

, & Kim

Se-Jik

. (1995). Human capital flight: Impact of migration on income and growth. Staff papers. International Monetary Foundation, 42(3), 577–607.

13.

Heenan

David A.

(2005). Flight capital: The alarming exodus of America’s best and brightest. California: Davies-Black Publishing.

14.

Jiang

(2003). Deng Xiaoping guanyu chuguo liuxue gongzuo de sixiang (Deng Xiaoping’s thinking on dispatching students overseas). Retrieved from http://www.chisa.edu.cn/newschisa/web/8/2003-05-27/news_481.asp accessed on 5 July 2003 .

15.

Kapur

Devesh

, & McHale

John

. (2005). Give us your best and brightest: The global hunt for talent and its impact on the developing world. Washington, DC: Center for Global Development.

16.

Lafraniere

Sharon

. (2010, January 6). Fighting trend, China is luring scientists home. New York Times. Retrieved 14 February 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/us/politics/28health.html

17.

Meyer

Jean-Baptiste

, Kaplan

David

, & Charum

Jorge

. (2001). Scientific Nomadism and the new geopolitics of knowledge. International Social Science Journal, 53, 309–321.

18.

McCormick

, & Wahba

(2001). Overseas work experience, savings and entrepreneurship amongst returnees to LDCs. Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 48, 164–178.

19.

Miller

Paul W.

(1999). Immigration policy and immigrant quality: The Australian points system. The American Economic Review, 89, 192–197.

20.

Miyagiwa

Kaz

. (1991). Scale economies in education and the brain drain problem. International Economic Review, 32(3), 743–759.

21.

OECD. (1996). The Knowledge-based economy.

22.

Saxenian

Annalee

. (2005). From brain drain to brain circulation: Transnational communities and regional upgrading in India and China. Studies in Comparative International Development, 40, 35–61.

23.

Simon

Fred D.

, & Cong

(2009). China’s Emerging Technological Edge: Assessing the Role of High-End Talent. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

24.

Tang

, & Shapira

Philip

. (2011). China–US scientific collaboration in nanotechnology: Patterns and dynamics. Scientometrics, 88(1), 1–16.

25.

Tani

Massimiliano

. (2008). Short-term skilled labour movements and economic growth. International Migration, 46, 161–187.

26.

Tian

(2011). Emigration of Chinese scientists and its impacts on national research performance from a sending country perspective. Doctoral dissertation, George Mason University.

27.

Wadhwa

Vivek

, Jasso

, Rissing

, Gereffi

, & Freeman

(2007). Intellectual property, the immigration backlog, and a reverse brain drain America’s new immigrant entrepreneurs, Part III. Kauffman Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.cggc.duke.edu/documents/IntellectualProperty_theImmigrationBacklog_andaReverseBrainDrain_003.pdf

28.

Wadsworth

Jonathan

. (2010). The UK labour market and immigration. National Institute Economic Review, 213(1), 35–42.

29.

Wahba

, & Zenou

(2012). Out of sight, out of mind: Migration, entrepreneurship and social capital. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 42, 890–903.

30.

Wang

Feiling

. (2005). Brewing tensions while maintaining stabilities: The dual role of the Hukou system in contemporary China. Asian Perspective, 29(4), 85.

31.

Woodruff

, & Zenteno

(2007). Migration networks and microenterprises in Mexico. Journal of Development Economics, 82, 509–528.

32.

Wong

Kar-yiu

, & Yip

Chong Kee

. (1999). Education, economic growth, and brain drain. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 23(5), 699–726.

33.

Xin

Hao

. (2006). Frustrations mount over China’s high-priced hunt for trophy professors. Science, 313(5794), 1721–1723.

34.

Xiang

Biao

. (2003). Emigration from China: A sending country’s perspective. International Migration. 41(3), 21–48.

35.

Ynalvez

M.A.

, & Shrum

W.M.

(2011). Professional networks, scientific collaboration, and publication productivity in resource-constrained research institutions in a developing country. Research Policy, 40(2), 204–216.

36.

Zhao

, Drew

, & Murray

T.S.

(2000). Brain drain and brain gain: The migration of knowledge workers from and to Canada. Education Quarterly Review, 6(3), 8–35.

37.

Zweig & Chen (1995). China’s Brain Drain to the United States: Views of Overseas Chinese Students and Scholars in the 1990s, Berkeley: Institute for East Asian Studies, China Research Monograph Series. (republished by Routledge in 2013).

38.

Zweig

Chen

, & Rosen

Stanley

(2007). Transnational human capital: Returnees to China. In Zweig

& Chen

(Eds), Globalization and China’s reforms (pp. 204–222). London: Routledge.

39.

Zweig

David

. (2011). From brain drain to brain gain. China Economic Quarterly, 15(2), 24–28.

40.

Zweig

David

., Changgui

Chen

, & Rosen

Stanley

. (2004). Globalization and transnational human capital: Overseas returnees scholars to China. The China Quarterly, 179, 735–757.