Why should China encourage and support overseas students to return to China?

China is the biggest loser in the talent war.

Today, China is experiencing the third wave of immigration after the late 1970s and early 1990s.

According to Global Politics and Security in 2007, China is the world's largest country of emigration and brain drain. Last year alone, there were 65,000 immigrants from China to the United States, while the ratio of skilled immigrants to investment immigrants in the past decade was 20: 1. These skilled immigrants are mainly social elites who have obtained a master's degree or above in China and have three to five years of work experience.

By 2009, China sent about 1.62 million overseas students, the highest in the world, but only 490,000 returned to China. According to the data of China Association for Science and Technology, since 1985, 80% of high-tech graduates from Tsinghua have gone to the United States and 76% from Peking University.

According to the American Science magazine, in 2006, the first source of doctoral students in the United States was Tsinghua, and the second source was Peking University. Because most of these science and engineering doctors in China take the road of "working in the United States-obtaining visas-applying for green cards-naturalizing in the United States", American Science magazine called Tsinghua and Peking University "the most fertile doctoral training bases in the United States".

At present, China is still the biggest loser in the global talent competition. After China became the largest source of doctoral students in the United States, China became the country with the largest number of doctoral graduates studying in the United States. Although China has a large trade surplus of goods in international trade, China has a huge deficit in talent trade.

According to authoritative data quoted by The New York Times in the 8th issue of the Southern Window magazine this year, the proportion of foreign students who received their doctorate degrees in science and engineering in the United States in 2002 remained in the United States in 2009, and China was the highest among all doctoral students in the United States (see chart).

South Korea and Japan have also sent a large number of overseas students, but the most obvious difference between Japan and South Korea and China is that most outstanding talents did not come back after China's "brain drain". According to a statistic of the Organization for International Economic Cooperation, during the period from 1990 to 1999, the proportion of doctoral students studying abroad in Chinese mainland was 87%. In contrast, the retention rate of Korean doctors is only 39%.

China must face this reality, show that it really attaches importance to talents in policies and actions, promotes the return of talents, encourages the circulation of talents overseas, and makes contributions to the motherland. By improving the mechanism of evaluating, selecting, using and motivating talents and the overall environment, soil and supporting policies, we will retain our outstanding talents and attract outstanding overseas talents. As former Indian President Karam pointed out, "complaining about others or just singing high-profile patriotism will not help stop the brain drain, and the government should take practical measures to retain talents."