Mobile Landscape: An Analysis of Chinese Foreign-Educated Young Scientists

Abstract

In this study, we provide a systematic picture of young Chinese overseas scholars by investigating the Thousand Youth Talents Program, a flagship talent program in China's current talent-funding system. Through investigating the demographics and the return status of overseas Chinese scholars, we attempt to answer a key question: how do they perform after their return. We conducted an analysis from five aspects, including personal characteristics, return institution statistics, educational background, discipline statistics, and position statistics. We find that most scientists were granted at the age of 33. The proportion of male far exceeds female. The Chinese Academy of Science is the most frequent recipient of returnee talents. The majority returned scientists obtained their doctoral degree from universities ranked 51 to 200 worldwide. The majority of the scholars have majors in life sciences, engineering, and material science. Only 13.65% of total returnees achieved tenure or tenure-track positions while abroad. Combined with publication data from the Scopus database, we are less certain with the effect of return on the post-return performance of young overseas Chinese scientists.