Report details outflow of Chinese scientists
New data document an alarming increase in American-trained scientists of Chinese descent who are leaving the United States for Chinese universities, driven by what many say is a hostile racial and political environment.
The number of researchers who dropped their American academic or corporate affiliation in 2021 jumped 23 percent from the prior year, according to a new report from the Asian American Scholar Forum — a total that includes both early-career scientists and professors with tenure.
The study, commissioned by the forum, which advocates for faculty members of Asian descent, is based on changes in authors’ listed addresses in papers published by academic journals. Last year, nearly 1,500 scholars in the sciences and social sciences who began their academic careers in the United States switched their American addresses to ones in China.
The research is an effort to quantify the impact of the China Initiative, the U.S. government’s investigation of academic and economic espionage begun in 2018 under President Donald J. Trump and ended in February by the Biden administration. Since 2018, the number of academics departing for China has increased by 40 percent.
The increase in outflow was pronounced among academics in two broad areas: engineering and computer science, and mathematics and physical science.
Still, the departures represent just a small percentage of the Chinese-born academics at American colleges — the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Earned Doctorates reports that more than 6,300 Chinese nationals earned Ph.D.s in 2020 alone, and eight in 10 remained in the United States for their first job or postdoctoral position.
Previously, returning to China “was only a second-choice back-up” for Chinese-born scholars like Yu Xie, a professor of sociology at Princeton University who wrote the report with colleagues at Princeton, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In recent years, China has become more attractive as it has invested in its universities and in scientific research, and the Chinese government has tried to entice foreign-educated scholars to return home. But the acceleration in reverse brain drain that coincided with the China Initiative could have troubling implications for American competitiveness and innovation, which rely heavily on attracting and retaining top talent from overseas.
Also worrisome is the increase in experienced researchers leaving for China despite deep ties to the United States, Xie said. Such professors typically have tenure, American-born children, and American citizenship or permanent residence.
In an accompanying survey of academics of Chinese origin based in the United States, 60 percent of respondents said they had considered leaving the country, whether for China or elsewhere. (In their bibliometric analysis, the researchers did not measure trends in scientists who leave the United States for countries other than China.)
Seven in 10 respondents said they no longer felt safe in the United States as an academic researcher, and more than six in 10 said they were wary of collaborating with colleagues in China. Eighty-six percent reported that it was more difficult to recruit top international students than five years ago.
The findings echo an earlier study by researchers at the University of Arizona of Chinese and Asian American scientists. The survey results underscore how “fearful” many scholars have become since the China Initiative, Xie said.
One respondent, a U.S. citizen and winner of a National Science Foundation award for early-career scientists, said he had quit his academic position because of what he called an “anti-Chinese atmosphere.”
“What I ha[ve] experienced not [only] ruined my academic career, but also destroyed my American dream,” he wrote.
The survey was conducted from December 2021 to March 2022, and the bibliometric analysis concludes in 2021, so neither offers direct insight into perceptions and behaviors following the China Initiative’s formal end. But Xie said there are reasons for continuing concern. For one, there have anecdotally been signs of an enrollment slowdown in Chinese graduate students, which could affect the next generation of scientists and researchers.
And while the investigation has been officially concluded, the conditions that led to the China Initiative remain, including heightened Sino-American tensions and legitimate concerns about the steps the Chinese government is willing to take to achieve scientific pre-eminence. As a result, Chinese American scientists could continue to be, as the study is titled, caught in the crossfire.
“The broader context in which the China Initiative was launched,” Xie said, “has not disappeared.”
Related: A former Texas A&M University professor and NASA researcher has pleaded guilty to charges of hiding his ties to a Chinese university when applying for federal grants. Zhengdong Cheng was initially charged with multiple counts, including wire fraud and conspiracy, but he pleaded guilty to only two, related to falsifying documents, after a deal with prosecutors. A federal judge sentenced Cheng to the 13 months he had already served when waiting for his trial.
