The Reversed Brain Drain: A Mixed-method Study of the Reversed Migration of Chinese Overseas Scientists

Abstract

This article reviewed the Chinese policy and talent programmes after 1978 to reverse the historically brain drain of China. Under the current wave of reversed migration, Chinese overseas returned scientists and scholars have gradually changed the labour structure of Chinese academia. We used the dataset of the 2008 National Survey of Science and Technology Personnels, conducted by the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development (CASTED), to do quantitative analysis and comparison on the performances of overseas returnees and local scholars. It is found out that the overseas PhD returnees are still in short supply. Overseas returned scientists are generally better off in academic and innovative performances. Sizable qualitative interviews showed that even within the influx of overseas returnees, the labour market is also a social and political field that the social network and policy design would largely direct the flow of overseas returned scientists.