Thursday, September 23rd, 2010 Diaspora Delivers Diversity: Overseas Returned Students and China’s Modernization

Description

Modernizing societies in today’s globalized world need human talent with international capabilities. Yet developing societies face enormous risk if the talent flowing abroad does not return or contribute to national growth. Between 1978 and 2009, over 1.5 million Chinese students and scholars went abroad to study. Fortunately, approximately 460,000 people have returned, filling the ranks of academics, scientists, entrepreneurs, managers in multinational corporations. Thus while in the 1980s and 1990s, a “brain drain” truly drained the country of talent, since the late 1990s, China has benefited from “brain circulation.” This lecture outlines the incentives and characteristics of these returnees, the state’s role in encouraging their return, and the problems faced as China it tries to assimilate this inbound population. It draws on seven surveys carried out by the author with a variety of Western and Chinese colleagues and organizations and extensive interviews in Hong Kong, the mainland, the U.S. and Canada.

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DAVID ZWEIG is Chair Professor, Division of Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Director of the Center on Environment, Energy and Resource Policy. His four books include Internationalizing China: domestic interests and global linkages. He recently edited special issues of Pacific Affairs and Journal of International Migration and Integration focusing on Chinese migration in Asia. His current book on Chinese who studied abroad is tentatively entitled “China’s Global Citizens.”