Forecast: Chinese labor recruitment causing workforce tension
It is widely known that China has been trying to attract the best and brightest of its foreign trained scientists and engineers to return home. Honors, new labs, money, and prestigious positions are lavished upon those few Chinese nationals who decide to bring back their knowledge and expertise to aid the motherland. For example, the Chinese Academy of Science’s Hundred Talents Program aims at Chinese nationals who have received a Ph.D. from abroad by offering 2 million yuan (approximately USD 286,000) and other benefits over 3 years.
Little is known, however, about the professional and private problems these experts face.
Many in their 30s to 40s find themselves in the isolating and awkward position of filling a generational and cultural gap in China’s technical labor force. In 2007, the average age of the 29 academicians selected by the Chinese Academy of Sciences was 53.7 years old. In contrast, the team of scientists and engineers who worked on China’s much heralded Chang E lunar probe had an average age of 30! The Chinese media was abuzz with this generational gap, many in the online world pointing to the devastating legacy of the Cultural Revolution on China’s higher education system as the cause for the missing generation.
Those scientists and engineers who return from abroad end up filling this void. Most are not quite mid-career, having an established record of success yet early enough in their careers to have the promise of even greater future potential. Though stars, they are still vastly outnumbered by colleagues who are, quite frankly, not qualified to publish anything in an internationally recognized journal, yet who continue to train much of the next generation. Moreover, most Chinese students, even at elite universities such as Beijing University and Qinghua University, are extremely narrowly educated and are almost never challenged to work beyond the parameters of well defined assignments. After several years, these sorts of factors can lead to professional friction over such issues as promoting students and younger colleagues as well as a lack of personal fulfillment. Add to this the unstudied factor that not a few who return to China have families who remain living abroad.
China has been moderately successful in attracting well qualified scientists from abroad who are early to mid-level in their career. How long these stars will continue to shine in the darkness of the nation’s academic and research bureaucracy is questionable.
“China’s National Medium and Long Term Science and Technology Development Plan (2006-2020)”
http://www.most.gov.cn/kjgh/
Personnel and education of Chinese Academy of Sciences:
http://www.caspe.ac.cn/policy.asp?Parent=93
National science & technology awards:
http://www.nosta.gov.cn/web/index.aspx
评论
Historical and other examples
I'm trying to think of historical examples of recruitments like this, and other than the cases of Korea and a couple other recent countries, I'm hard-pressed to think of any. The United States, the country that arguably has benefited most from global movement of scientific talent, hasn't focused on particular countries, except somewhat accidentally.
And the issue of returning scientists and engineers with families in the West is one that companies like Samsung and LG, which have worked hard to recruit Korean-born, American-trained scientists and engineers, is a live one. In Korea, there's even a term for it: "parachute dads," fathers who live in Korea and spend a few weeks a year with their families in the U.S. or Europe.
"parachute dads"?
The more popular terminology widely used in Korea is "(wild) goose dad [girogi appa]," which is an analogy to the seasonal migration behavior of said birds.