News on China's scientific and technological development.
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manqiangrexue
Brigadier
There's no space for them in China; China's white collar market is super-saturated. I spoke about my story before; I developed my career with every intention of going to China. I chased China's demand from graduating high school all the way into my professional genetics career. But every step, I was 1 step behind and could never catch up to the quickly rising criteria that Chinese institutes looked for in overseas talent. I'm just not that exceptional, not a frontier-pushing innovator who is fought for internationally and very very few scientists, expecially clinical scientists, ever get to become one. So I'll end up in the 87 percent in that study, though my heart and intentions were always in the top 1%. I didn't have a choice not because the US has excellent talent retention but because China has everything it needs and exceptionally high walls for adding anyone else.
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My friend, this graph already selects for the top researchers in the field. None of us are exceptional, so we won't even be in the left side 100 people in the list.
Do you know who will be? Yao Shunyu
He's so GOATed that his Physics professor from Tsinghua said this about him "Even among our professors, no one has reached the current physics level of Yao Shunyu during his undergraduate years."
He still came to the US for his PhD and is working at Google Deepmind.
He is a generational talent even for Tsinghua. Precisely the kind who can lead to ground-breaking results. These sort are leaving China.
If anyone has numbers, I would be really interested to know how much of the Yao undergrad class ended up going abroad. This seems to be the premium batch.
The only information I can find about the Yao Class is this:
"all twenty-seven Yao Class 60 graduates have chosen to pursue further study at prestigious institutions in the USA, France, Canada, Hong Kong and Tsinghua University"
Based on my random search for yao class grads online, I found most of them in the US. Obviously an unscientific method, but at least something to start off.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
How does it select for top minds? It just says 100 researchers from 2019. Yes, the US certainly got this guy and they're not all bottom of the barrel, but I am also seeing a lot of Chinese highly rated professors move back as well. What I wrote is to point out that China's market saturation is a major factor in the high skew, not that all Chinese scientists that remain in the US are trash. If all these guys were trash, the US would be trash because American STEM is completely dependent on imported scientists.
Two further points, though:
1. US talent retention against China for top scientists has slipped compared to its historic advantages due to China's modernization so China has much stronger ability to choose whom to accept.
2. Even with all these poached scientists, America's still moving slower than China and that's only set to slow down further as China improves its nation-building. It's to the point that China's even poaching some Western scientists? Really just wanted sea turtles but ok.
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The first thing China should do is to hike up the salaries of top scientists. It looks like they need to increase by multiple times for attracting talents.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
They do this case by case. If they want a guy because he's a big help for China's tech supremacy, sky's the limit on his salary. To be honest, this person will be taken care of so well in China that money will be irrelevant; everything for a lavish lifestyle will be honor-given to him.
Yes, there were many attempts to do it. But the same problem always appeared. Along with the top ones, the salary of the worse ones, with old merits etc. but with connections and sharp elbows.. And of course envy and rivalry. Especially in larger teams.
When someone solves this... they will get a Nobel Prize.