More STEM PhDs come home as China’s global standing soars

China’s positional change within the global political economy has resulted in a continuous expansion in the scale of Chinese students returning home after their overseas studies. Since 2012, more than 80% of overseas Chinese students have opted to return – a big increase from about 5% in 1987 and 30.6% in 2007.

Meanwhile, as the competition for academic positions continues to escalate in the Global North, the reverse flow phenomenon is becoming all the more conspicuous among international doctorate holders. And this even affects those from science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, who were far more likely to stay abroad before China transformed itself into a new geo-economic powerhouse.

While it is not yet possible to ascertain whether the homebound mobility of international STEM talent will engender a permanent human capital loss for their host countries, it arguably has a key role to play in further reversing the brain drain from China to the developed nations, and importantly, in reshaping global economic dynamics.

In a recent paper, we zoomed in on the booming return migration of Chinese early career STEM researchers trained in various host destinations across the world.

Targeting those currently working at 10 premier research universities located in one of China’s most economically advanced regions – the Yangtze River Delta – our primary purpose was to show the multiple forces and different stages that played out in their eventual decision to return to China.

The survey and interview data yielded comprehensive insights into the gendered disparities in young academic elites’ motivation to return and the social mechanism which influenced their ensuing institutional choices.

Notably, while offering compelling evidence in relation to the argument that early career return does not necessarily prevent highly mobile scientific talent from migrating again at a future point, the research also suggests that it is becoming more difficult for returning Chinese scientists to do so amidst China’s rapid rise in power within the global hierarchy of knowledge production.

Shifting mobility trends

The return rate of foreign-educated Chinese doctoral recipients in STEM fields used to be notoriously low. Over the past two decades a change in this trend has gradually evolved. Behind it are contemporary China’s prospering economy, strategic talent policies and the large sum of funding it has poured into scientific research.

As a result, overseas STEM graduates are increasingly looking to return as they reach the critical juncture of entering the job market.

As our findings demonstrate, while economic and familial considerations tend to disproportionately feature in the decision-making process of different social groups, the drive to seek better employment conditions and career prospects in Chinese academia is consistently high among early career academics.

A similar pattern has been observed in the substantial weight these academic returnees place on staying close to ageing parents and on fulfilling their caring obligations. This is equally true for both genders, as most belong to China’s one-child generation who shoulder heavier filial responsibilities than those born before the country enforced the one-child policy in the late 1970s.

Yet, the relative position of their PhD host countries within the global knowledge economy seems also to have a strong influence in their decision-making processes.

Researchers with a PhD from leading English-speaking countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, the so-called academic core countries which have traditionally been the top study destinations for Chinese international students, appear less worried about the potential financial benefits they can derive from returning and the geographical location of their chosen universities than individuals returning from the European Union, Asia and other non-Western countries.

If anything, this finding attests to the greater symbolic value of a doctorate awarded in the Anglophone world, which can more easily translate into attractive job placements at Chinese universities and therefore transcend the non-professional gains from the perspective of this returning cohort.

Gendered differences

What seems most noteworthy are the stark and prevalent differences in the return motives across different genders. Female returnees reported a significantly weaker desire to return for career advancement, to reconnect with their homeland and to reclaim their social status. And they don’t perceive the international academic job markets to be as dire as their male counterparts do.

Fundamentally, this has to do with the differing positions men and women academic migrants occupy in their host and home countries. For instance, according to scientists returning from the US, Asian males don’t tend to benefit from the equality interventions erected in American organisations which are skewed towards empowering black and minority ethnic females.

What’s more, unlike males, female returnees were less proactive in mobilising their transnational social networks to navigate their entry back into Chinese academia. This shows the asymmetrical capital accumulation effects through international mobility, especially for women professionals in STEM fields.

The deficit in network utilisation is not exclusive to female researchers, however. There are returnees who have detached themselves from local scholarly circles after several years of living and studying abroad. This has directly affected their attempts to apply to traditional elite universities where academic connections can often outweigh individual merits in faculty selection.

As such, returnees with limited access to local social resources have tended more towards targeting younger, elite institutions such as Westlake University whose hiring practices are modelled on American research universities.

Circular migration

Given the uncertain and circular nature of highly skilled migration in a globalised world, we also probed the question of whether returnees might consider travelling abroad for work in the future. It turns out that Chinese government scholarship recipients and those who did not make up their mind to return until near the end of their overseas sojourn seem to be regretting their return choice to a certain extent.

Nevertheless, the likelihood of them leaving China again should not be overrated. Since the universities they enter are increasingly poised to be strong competitors in global university rankings, it remains open to question whether they will follow through with their plans to move abroad for work again.

Considering the importance of institutional factors that attract international scientific talent back, it is essential for leading higher education institutions in China to embrace more formal and transparent faculty recruitment practices at a systemic scale. Moreover, prioritising the principles of gender equity and non-compulsory return in talent policy development will be vital for the long-term retention of a diverse STEM workforce.

Xiujuan Sun is a postdoctoral research fellow at Zhejiang University with a focus on the education-migration nexus, doctoral education and post-PhD careers. Her work delves into the complexities of pathways towards and through the evolving landscape of doctoral studies and academic careers in a Global South context. Hantian Wu is a professor at Zhejiang University, specialising in the internationalisation and indigenisation of higher education, academic knowledge production in emerging economies and the dynamics of world knowledge systems. His research provides insights into the micro, meso and macro levels of knowledge production. He also explores the positional shifts of (semi-)peripheral higher education systems within a global context and the impact of academic mobility on these dynamics.

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.