Global talent chains in ‘tectonic’ shift towards Asia

Technology and geopolitics are driving a major shift in global talent chains which previously saw Chinese and Indian students heading for Western countries, particularly the United States, Canada and Europe.

But geopolitical tensions over trade and technology, coupled with visa uncertainties in the US and other countries, have influenced these large groups of students from Asia’s most populous countries – India and China. Many are now choosing to remain in their home countries or return after a stint of study or work abroad.

There has also been an increase in Chinese and Indian mid-career academics returning from abroad due to uncertainties, notably in the US, but also attracted by growing opportunities in India and China, respectively, said experts on an online panel organised by Dialogues on Asian Universities, a forum set up by university leaders in Asia.

Tony Chan, former president of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia, and of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, while moderating the online panel discussion held this month titled Tectonic Shift in the Global Talent Chain against a backdrop of technological disruption and geopolitical turbulence, pointed to the old pattern of students from India and China going to the US and the West as changing: “The flow of talent is instead going more one way; now it’s going both ways. It’s more multi-polar.”

Professor Rangan Banerjee, director of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D) said: “Very clearly things are changing, and the two drivers identified are both technology and geopolitics.

“The geopolitics are such that this is the right time for Asian universities to play a leading role in nurturing the talent pool and finding solutions to the world’s problems.”

These include critical areas of research like artificial intelligence (AI), quantum technologies and global challenges.

In India and elsewhere in Asia “many universities and higher educational institutions have come of age,” he pointed out.

Referring to India’s IIT’s, which attract top students: “Ten to 15 years back, a large chunk or the majority of our students were good students who would go to the US or to Europe for higher education, but that trend has changed.”

“In IITs today it is just about 10% of our students who are leaving the country for higher education. Most of the people (graduating) are taking up jobs (in India), some of them international jobs, and we are seeing a trend for innovation and startups – there is a booming startup ecosystem,” Banerjee stated.

He noted that while IIT students are increasingly staying in India, the overall number of Indian students going to the US is still growing, but these are coming from second-tier institutions in India.

China attracts returnees

Yaqin Zhang, chair professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and the founding dean of the Tsinghua Institute for AI Industry Research, having been president of Chinese tech giant Baidu and managing director of Microsoft Research Asia, also noted a shift in talent flow in favour of China.

“Twenty-five years ago, the best [Chinese] students went to the US and Europe, but mainly the US, to get their PhDs and to find jobs… and the faculties [at Chinese universities] were mostly educated in China,” said Zhang.

But now “most of the faculties at Tsinghua actually have a PhD from the US or the rest of the world, and also the best students choose to stay in China, especially in the last five years”, he added.

According to Zhang, around 90% of the top 20% of students in computer science at Tsinghua University have stayed in China recently.

Zhang also pointed to geopolitics as one reason: “It’s harder for Chinese top students to get a visa,” he said.

In addition, young members of Tsinghua’s faculty hired this year and last year “mostly got their PhDs from within China – that’s a major, major, major shift”.

Zhang noted that when he set up the Microsoft Research Lab in Beijing 25 years ago in 1999, they could attract very good computer science talent from within China to do PhDs.

However, he pointed out that their research was “not so good”, mainly because “their professors back then in China were not doing state-of-the-art research and the students were not trained to do the best research.”

But today at Tsinghua and at Chinese companies like Baidu “they’re as good as the very best students and engineers in any other universities and companies”, he explained. He noted that in AI, around 40% of the global research contribution in terms of academic papers published is from China.

Innovation and startup ecosystem

Both India, with its Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) and Viksit Bharat 2047 to become a developed nation by 2047, and the increasing confidence of India’s tech industry, and China with its own self-sufficiency drive are focusing on technological self-reliance and developing their own technology leadership.

“The Indian economy is growing at a fairly high rate. There is significant push for innovation and startups, and so there is a big boom in terms of people trying to run with their own ideas and then making that work. This is something which has created a lot of excitement on campuses,” Banerjee said.

Giving scholars the freedom to teach and research, coupled with stronger industry links as more and more industries move to India and other parts of Asia, “could be a way in which we are able to attract more of the returnees”, he said, for example, who wish to leave the US, amid well-documented swingeing cuts in research grants and attacks on university freedoms.

Many Indian industries and even global companies are partnering with universities and providing opportunities for students, he explained as a pull factor.

“There are hubs where there is a lot of innovation, there’s a lot of startup activity, there’s a lot of R&D,” so students are moving into the workforce as soon as they graduate, he said.

“Ten to 12% of our undergraduate students directly after their graduation go into a startup or work with a startup, which is which is a fairly large number,” he noted.

India cannot match the salaries in the West, particularly the US. “It’s about the overall ecosystem,” he explained.

Banerjee later told University World News: “The innovation and startup ecosystem, the possibility of doing something, having a good quality of life, and making a difference within India – those have been factors that have been improving in India as an attraction.”

“Some of them do come back later on for higher studies, but the proportion, at least for IIT students, who are going for higher studies immediately has declined very significantly,” he added.

Zhang said that China’s “big techs – Baidu, Ali Baba, Tencent, Huawei – all these companies create a huge number of opportunities, and they’re also in the frontier of the tech industry. Obviously, there are a lot of new startups in AI that continue to pull people”.

“Chinese universities, including companies, do offer very compelling compensation in total package. So, I think that's good to attract talent.”

He noted that at his institute at Tsinghua, 70% of faculty members have industrial experience, and some have run research labs in industry. “We need our faculties to have dual experiences,” he said, noting that the university liked faculty members to contribute to building startups.

Global experience is still important

Nonetheless, Chinese students and their families still believe global experience is very important “to learn how to work with other students, to work with other universities, and to get the diversity in culture, to gain confidence, to have that global exposure and the vision – it is important to have that interaction and exposure,” he stated.

Zhang said, in some research areas, “the US certainly has a much larger number of star talents, the pioneers and the top architects. Many of them are from around the world”, but he added that China has a much larger number of younger talents.

In terms of research talent “China has probably five times more than the US. That's just because of its population (size) and because of people who love to do computer science, who love to do AI. Chinese culture has respect for STEM, for scientists, for scholars, for engineering and for technologists.”

Both China and India are unable to match the international atmosphere of US institutions, however. Banerjee said in India the focus is on domestic students at India’s 23 IITs, which are highly selective. “less than 1% of students who want to get into an IIT at the undergraduate level manage to qualify”.

While China mainly attracts ethnic Chinese international students to its universities, which teach in Chinese.

Short-term or ‘tectonic’ change?

But for the changes to be a ‘tectonic shift’ as described by the panel title, they need to be more than a temporary blip. Chan told University World News afterwards that he believed “the impact is longer term”.

He added: “One aspect is the perception of uncertainty in the US, which will have a long-term effect on the mindset of international students applying to US universities.

“The last thing a student wants is to invest several years of their lives studying in a foreign country, oftentimes turning down other offers, but under a cloud of uncertainty as to whether their progress will be seriously disrupted.”

Visa issues in the US have prompted many international students “to look elsewhere for a safe haven and some of them are discovering that there are many excellent alternatives outside the US. The same goes for faculty members who are considering visiting or joining US universities”, Chan said.