Why China Can't Lure Tech Talent (bloomberg.com)

China may have been hoping to attract tech talent to its nation, but it is unlikely that people in the tech industry will move there. A columnist at Bloomberg explains why: The biggest problem is government control of the internet. For a software developer, the inconvenience goes well beyond not being able to access YouTube during coffee breaks. It means that key software libraries and tools are often inaccessible. In 2013, China blocked Github, a globally important open-source depository and collaboration tool, thereby forcing developers to seek workarounds. Using a virtual private network to "tunnel" through the blockades is one popular option. But VPNs slow uploads, downloads and collaboration. And it isn't just developers who suffer. Among the restricted sites in China is Google Scholar, a tool that indexes online peer-reviewed studies, conference proceedings, books and other research material into an easily accessible format. It's become a crucial database for academics around the world, and Chinese researchers -- even those with VPNs -- struggle to use it. The situation grew so dire this summer that several state-run news outlets published complaints from Chinese scientists, with one practically begging the nationalist Global Times newspaper: "We hope the government can relax supervision for academic purposes." The cumulative impact of these restrictions is significant. Scientists unable to keep up with what researchers in other countries are publishing are destined to be left behind, which is one reason China is having difficulty luring foreign scholars to its universities. Programmers who can't take advantage of the sites and tools that make development a global effort are destined to write software customized solely for the Chinese market. The author has raised several other reasons to make his case.

Comments

How strange

[Anonymous Coward]

I would never have thought that people with good educations and job prospects wouldn't want to move to a country with totalitarian control of your daily life. Next you're going to tell me North Korea has similar problems.

Re:How strange

[irrational_design]

What about my freedom to be free of your secondhand smoke?

Re:How strange

[OakDragon]

I've lost count of the number of states that have banned smoking

I'm thinking no more than 50.

Re:How strange

[Malc]

I've lived in Shanghai and the most eye opening part about it is was how spectacularly wrong my American colleagues were about China. Before I left to live there, I was told how Communist it was, how dangerous it was, how there was no freedom. What I found was a country that is way more capitalist than the US and people pretty much leading the life they wanted. There are so many things that squash your freedom in the West but you don't notice it because you've known no better,

Also, the pollution

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to Beijing and it was pollution hell. Couldn't see further than 50 feet in front of you somedays.

Re:Also, the pollution

[Fire_Wraith]

And what did "private" society do to clean up the environment? Mobilized to force politicians to enact laws and regulations, that's what, because that's what works most efficiently. Government leads the parade because we put it there, because nobody else has the power to do what we need it to do. If we created some other entity with that ability, it would just be 'government' by a different name.

The EPA could certainly be run better. It could certainly do a better job. I've yet to hear real suggestions about that, as opposed to knee-jerk "Government bad, private sector free market good" drivel. The private sector would murder babies if it increased profits and nobody stopped them, because that's how capitalism works if left unchecked. Capitalism can do very good things, but like nuclear energy, if you don't control it, it makes a huge frakking mess. Don't believe me? Go read up on Slavery. (No, Slavery wasn't about race at first - it was about money. The racist stuff was what people invented to help themselves feel less terrible about the terrible things they were doing to other humans).

Clearly the problem is that we need to do a better job of controlling our government - but I think the problem is less that the agencies run amuck, so much as some of the people we're sending to Washington who have no interest in seeing the government be run well. We elect people that say "Government is Terrible", and then we're surprised when they give us terrible government?

Are they trying to?

[ugen]

I am not sure they are really trying too hard in the first place. I speak Mandarin (have been studying for many years), have a good resume and appropriate technical background, and spent substantial time in China to have a general idea of how things are - yet I have never been able to attract interest of any Chinese company. Given what I know about their local tech workforce, that's not at all surprising. They have excellent pool of well qualified candidates.

That's not to say that article does not bring good points - internet use in China is encumbered and painful. But that's has little to do with "attracting tech talent".

Re:Are they trying to?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not sure they are really trying too hard in the first place. I speak Mandarin (have been studying for many years), have a good resume and appropriate technical background, and spent substantial time in China to have a general idea of how things are - yet I have never been able to attract interest of any Chinese company.

I am in a situation very similar to you and have been actually interviewing to some Chinese companies and also know people working in those. I am very confident that China is actually trying to lure tech talent from abroad, but they prefer people who have worked in big companies and do not speak Chinese. The reason for the first is that they are very interested in the information they can get from their competitors and use for their advantage, and the reason for the second is that their own company internal information is all in Chinese and they don't want these same employees to leak that to their foreign competitors.

So to put it short, they want to leech information out of their competition by hiring their ex-workers in any ways possible, but at the same time make sure that they are not leaking out anything. And the fact that you speak Mandarin and understand the Chinese culture to some extent makes you a unattractive candidate. It's much safer to hire Chinese candidates for the basic jobs and hire foreigners (who speak no Chinese) to the positions where they have serious need to catch up.

I would love to find out I'm just making this all up as a big conspiracy theory, but I have a bit too much stories and examples to support my assertion...

Re:Are they trying to?

[pablo_max]

Same here. I have a strong telecom background. Lived in Shanghai with my wife for 3 year. Looked for a job for the 7 months. Nothing.
I ended up teaching English at a private school and private lessons. I made 3 times what doing that as what I was paid as an engineer in the states.
There was some downsides, to be sure.
1. Stalkers. Seriously, some of those girls were certifiable. Never imagined I would have to deal with that.
2. The environment is dirty. You walk down the street and it looks nice and tidy. Looks past the bushes and you can see where all the garbage went.
3. The air is pretty dirty. I would run every day and I would be blowing black out of my nose the entire day.
4. The crowds are not for everyone. Seriously, it is crowed on the metro. And loads of the people do not know about deodorant.
5. Naked capitalism. People in the US like to think that they live in a capitalist society. Bullshit. You don't. China, is the most capitalist place I have ever been. If you were on fire, someone come over and try to sell you a bucket of water. They would never through it on you though. You would need to pay someone else to do that. It is pure capitalism without regard for anything else. That is the reason their environment is so F'ed up.

Having said that, I enjoyed living in China. I do not think I could ever live there again purely from the health point of view. But, by and large the people treated me well and I had a lot of fun. For now, I think I will stick to Germany.

No green cards, No ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

I lived in China for a year. I loved it. I love the culture, I love the country side. Even the pollution can be handled with a decent apartment with good window seals and air scrubbers. They people are fine (let's face it, all countries have great people and terrible people). But, the reason I, as a software engineer, won't go back: no green cards and you can't own property or start a business. Maybe when your 25 years old, the lack of unfettered internet is the worst thing you can think of. But, as you get older, you become more risk adverse. Why would I invest a life in a country where I cannot be granted permanent residence, even if I marry a citizen? I wouldn't; that's foolish.

Is stackoverflow blocked?

[FictionPimp]

As long as stackoverflow isn't blocked I can still get everyone else to write my code, so I'm good!

You will always be a foreigner

[GuB-42]

From what I heard it is impossible to be treated like one of them if you don't look Chinese, even if you speak perfect Mandarin, socialize and marry a local, etc...
Permanent visas, let alone citizenship, are extremely difficult to get and some places don't accept foreigners.
I suppose this gets on your nerves after some time.

Re: You will always be a foreigner

[Higaran]

That has always amazed me about other countries, I was born in Poland, but have grown up in the US from a very young age. When ever I go back to Poland, I only get treated by people I know closely like a local, but I consider myself an american. When every I go anywhere touristy I most people speak english to me before I've ever said a word. In the US after a few years you can become a citizen, in many other countries it takes generations, in the US everyone comes from somewhere else originally so it doesn't matter where you were from as long as you want to be and are a citizen now, I guess.

Dixie cups

[tomhath]

I suspect the people being recruited are concerned that the goal is to transfer the expertise they have to Chinese engineers/scientists. Once that transfer is done the foreigner will no longer have any value.

What FREEDOM means

[Anonymous Coward]

Daily life in China is freer than in the USA only because the government in China lacks the resources to apply its oppression more pervasively; freedom is the ability of the common man to evade or resist imposition.

Your Mileage May Vary

[Shoten]

There are, as described above, many reasons...but I think the "main" reason for any particular person will depend upon the person.

I was once contacted by Huawei about becoming an executive at their organization, in Beijing. Now..this is curious to me since I neither speak Mandarin nor Cantonese. I find it hard to imagine that I would make a very effective VP in a technical role, without even a basic conversational grasp of their language. (And don't even think about reading...)

However, interestingly enough, I also have a background in doing cyber security for the military in which role I got access to quite a lot of things. So...yeah. NO WAY was I going to entertain the job offer, for even a millisecond.

But you know what? Even without that creepiness, I wouldn't have considered it because of the air pollution. I can't imagine exercising outdoors in a place where the air is so filthy you can taste it. Hell no.

For some people, a reason not to go would be the culture shock...but for me, that's actually a plus. Or maybe the food? Nope...I love exploring new cuisines, and have always been fantastically happy getting authentic local food in any country I've visited. The crowding? Uh uh...I'm a hardcore urbanite. But for some others, these would be downsides instead of upsides...it all depends on the person.

Re:Also, the native language sucks

[Mal-2]

Tonal languages are not, in and of themselves, an inherently bad idea. It's just one more parameter which can be used to add information density without having to rush the actual mechanics of the speaker. The fact that some people are tone-deaf may pose a problem, just like the fact that some people are color-blind makes color coding a troublesome way to transmit critical information.

The character set used is not necessarily tied to this – it would be perfectly workable to retain the character set but speak a non-tonal language, and it is perfectly workable to write a tonal language in a phonetic alphabet. It just takes a lot of diacritical marks. If keeping the density high is an important goal, Hangul retains that feature while using a phonetic system by forming the characters into blocks representing syllables.

The most telling argument against change is that with the vast majority able to read and write, it would take a very large investment to change the writing system. Hangul did it in an era where most people couldn't read – the investment was correspondingly smaller, and it was the right move at the right time. Another argument is that even as languages drift or even have completely different origins, the writing system remains comprehensible to all users Such is not necessarily the case with phonetic languages – given enough time, what's written and what's spoken will diverge even if the spelling made perfect sense at the time it was codified. So maybe the thought process is:

1. It will take a lot of time and money.
2. It will break the means of communication between the multiple languages spoken in the country.
3. It will only provide temporary benefits.
4. The status quo puts up a significant barrier to foreign meddling.

Don't underestimate the power of the fourth one.