China lures home best and brightest, with some westerners as well
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http://themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/world/7879-china-lures-home-best-and-brightest...
From Newsweek International
AUG 19 — China has fought a battle against brain drain since Deng
Xiaoping opened the nation's doors 30 years ago. Many of the country's
brightest have streamed out and few have returned: of the estimated
815,000 who left to study abroad from 1978 to 2004, only about a
quarter came back, according to official data.
Yet now, with the country's economy booming and its prestige growing,
more and more Chinese expats, or hai gui (sea turtles), are starting
to swim home. Lured by patriotism, family, market forces and generous
government schemes, they and even some Western-born academics are
moving to China in growing numbers.
Most cite adventure and the chance to make a difference. Huang Ming is
typical. Born in China, he went to the United States for grad school
in 1985, eventually becoming a US citizen and getting tenure at
Cornell.
But he moved back a couple of years ago and now teaches at Beijing's
Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. The difference is stark. "In
the US I teach 24-year-olds," he says, whereas in China two-thirds of
his executive-MBA students are company bosses. That means that "here
we can make an immediate difference in the decision making of senior
executives," Huang says.
For Daniel Bell, a Canadian political philosopher, the biggest draw
was the chance to get an up-close view of China's young elite. "One
has to have an appetite for risk," says Bell, who now teaches at
Beijing's Tsinghua University. But being an insider-outsider at
China's most prestigious school has supplied material for his latest
book and enhanced his reputation.
Though more Western schools are willing to share their faculties —
letting academics like Huang keep their tenure while they move home
part time — going to China still carries risks. The pay is often low,
and abandoning the US system can mean losing seniority and job
security.
Also worrisome are the lack of free speech in China and the risk of
political interference, as well as the prospect of facing passive
students used to rote learning.
Yet the lure of China can prove irresistible. Funding schemes set up
to entice scientists home offer returnees full professorships as well
as research grants of 2 million yuan (RM963,000) and the chance to
lead a research team. But there's a catch — they have to give up their
foreign citizenship to make sure China gets full credit for their
research. Nonetheless, the main scheme has attracted nearly 1,000
returnees since 1994.
There are no national statistics on how many foreign academics now
teach in China, but business and finance professors are the most
visible — in part because their fields are relatively lucrative. Chen
Fangrou, a Wharton Ph.D. with a tenured post at Columbia, is now
working to recruit 40 overseas staff for Shanghai Jiao Tong
University's business school, where he is on a three-year secondment
as dean. The school rakes in about US$17 million (RM56 million) a year
in fees, giving it plenty of cash to lure foreigners.
China is also an attractive research environment, a giant field lab
with 1.3 billion subjects undergoing rapid transformation. "If
somebody is concerned with the big themes of social and political
change, Beijing is the place to be," says Bell. And the country offers
rich opportunities for business professors, since its industries are
exploding in an economy that breaks all the rules. Access to key
players is also good: "I have more opportunities to talk to
manufacturers here than in the US," says Chen.
As for academic freedom, most migrants have no complaints. Bell, who
previously taught in Singapore, says he suffered more political
interference there than at Tsinghua. "I've designed my own courses
[here]" — including one on democratic theory — "with no constraints,"
he says. And the students' passivity quickly evaporates once they
discover they're expected to argue, says Peking University economist
Michael Pettis.
Some academics worry that giving up jobs at prestigious US schools to
head to China could lead them to become too isolated. Though the
Internet makes things easier, "nothing beats face-to-face contact,"
says Huang. But most scholars agree that the prospects of being able
to return to the West depend on how much they can publish, which makes
the light teaching load they're offered another advantage. Even
academic isolation can prove useful, since there are fewer rivals
jostling for access to the same research materials. As all this
suggests, moving to China can still prove risky. But like much else in
the country's full-tilt economy, while the dangers may be great, so
are the rewards.
