[MaxPengwing]

Now the biggest issue is to get those that train to come back. A lot of Russians chose not to, same with Indians, and Japanese. China has an extensive espionage network focused on keeping track of exchange students and make sure that they fall in line. Much more so than any other nation.

have a friend from Malaysia and they had this smart idea that if you study abroad and get a PhD or Masters (as I understood it) your entire student loan would be forgiven. Again people didn't move back, so the last I hear was that they tried to make it contingent on moving back to Malaysia. My info is abitout of date since it was a pre pandemic conversation I had with him.

[alephnerd]

> chose not to, same with Indians

Not anymore. It's because of visa and naturalization backlogs.

When I was a kid growing up in the 90s and 2000s, it was common for Chinese nationals to naturalize and become citizens.

When the Chinese backlog reached a decade long 10-20 years ago, a lot of top tier Chinese talent decided to return to China because employment visa hell sucks and the Chinese private sector formalized and grew.

The same thing has started to happen with Indians as well (and happened to Koreans and Taiwanese in the 80s)

A Tsinghua or Jiaotong grad might have an incentive to do graduate school in the US or work here a couple years, but there's no point spending 5-7 years to naturalize when you can return to China and get funded or get tenure.

A similar thing has started happening in India as well at tier 1 IITs and then like.

[seanmcdirmid]

Note that Chinese emigration rate increased again due to COVID, and more Chinese are staying since then. It will be interesting to see if that sticks or not.

A lot of Chinese just hedge their bets with lives and investments in both countries (including anchor babies).

[MaxPengwing]

I was not aware of that, thanks for sharing! It does explain why I have seen more indian recruitment in EU from India and China since our backlog or naturalization process is only 5 years of living in the country and then 1-3 years for the bureaucracy to manage the application.