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Chinese Workers Abandon Silicon Valley for Riches Back Home (bloomberg.com)

Posted by msmash on from the change-in-paradigm dept.

From a report on Bloomberg: U.S.-trained Chinese-born talent is becoming a key force in driving Chinese companies' global expansion and the country's efforts to dominate next-generation technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning. Where college graduates once coveted a prestigious overseas job and foreign citizenship, many today gravitate toward career opportunities at home, where venture capital is now plentiful and the government dangles financial incentives for cutting-edge research. "More and more talent is moving over because China is really getting momentum in the innovation area," said Ken Qi, a headhunter for Spencer Stuart and leader of its technology practice. "This is only the beginning."

Chinese have worked or studied abroad and then returned home long enough that there's a term for them -- "sea turtles." But while a job at a U.S. tech giant once conferred near-unparalleled status, homegrown companies -- from giants like Tencent to up-and-comers like news giant Toutiao -- are now often just as prestigious. Baidu Inc. -- a search giant little-known outside of China -- convinced ex-Microsoft standout Qi Lu to helm its efforts in AI, making him one of the highest-profile returnees of recent years.

9 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. And yet.. by Sqreater · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Universities will not re-think allowing so many foreign students to take the seats of Americans.

    --
    E Proelio Veritas.
    1. Re:And yet.. by zlives · · Score: 4, Insightful

      you can blame the feds/states taking funding away and making them a business first. hey enjoy that tax break.

    2. Re:And yet.. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Universities will not re-think allowing so many foreign students to take the seats of Americans.

      The limiting factor for universities is not the number of chairs in the classroom. It is money. Since foreign students pay full tuition, they are helping to fund all the Americans paying in-state tuition or getting scholarships.

      By "exporting" education, America earns billions of dollars and generates jobs for hundreds of thousands of university employees. Portraying this as a "bad thing" is idiotic. We should be working to make it far easier for foreign students to study in America.

    3. Re:And yet.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Universities will not re-think allowing so many foreign students to take the seats of Americans.

      I guess Universities aren't those bastions of leftist ideology, because cash is still king.

      Oh yes they are. Recently the University of California had a big raise in tuition. The UC Regents claimed they looked all over for money, looked all over for savings, waste, duplication, etc; and found no alternative to raising student tuition.

      Less than a year later they are announcing their great new program to give illegal aliens in-state tuition rather than out-of-state. They had no problem finding the money for that. That was quite the political move given the above.

    4. Re:And yet.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Universities will not re-think allowing so many foreign students to take the seats of Americans."

      That just makes international universities more attractive places to attend.

      There are plenty of seats in university lecture halls, and much open time in those halls for more lectures. It's not seats, it's your intelligence or lack of ability to pay. No one is taking anything from you.

      This is like having a US commercial sports team reject international athletes. It's a less lucrative and interesting product.

      You might as well admit foreign students are smarter, richer, and more willing to take classes you can't. I'm a US citizen, got in and paid my way by myself through one of the most expensive national universities at the time I went to college, and I consider having international students at a university an integral part of my education experience.

      And you'd better be prepared to pay more. More for tuition. More for the teaching aids that teach many university classes. Pay out more for using research dollars going to research workers. I lot of university funding is from international students who pay up. There are several national security projects in the past that were implemented because of students from foreign countries in university positions.

      It's very strange you want to alienate international income in higher education, but have no problem with massive tax breaks international corporations have made out with, especially energy companies who build pipelines to export US natural gas overseas, or light sweet crude being exported out for mixing overseas, driving up barrel prices. The "market' increases in barrel or btu production alone since the tax "break" already has been eaten up.

      Once again, you advocate a position that actually hurts your chances at high education by raising the cost ceiling to you, while advocating companies get a free ride. What a ridiculous stance.

  2. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  3. Somebody would have to pay their tuition by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    and living expenses. The nice thing about foreign students isn't just that they pay more, it's that they have the money to pay. We've been cutting federal funding to Public Us non-stop since Clinton. Hell, I was there in the mid 90s when my school's paper started talking about how the cuts meant tuition would be over $10k by 2020. They were wrong, we passed that milestone in the mid 2000s. The schools didn't get that much more expensive to run either. Nor did the salaries go up all that much (the admin staff always made a tidy sum). We cut the funding, and it had to come from somewhere. Those tax cuts don't really pay for themselves, ya know.

    --
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  4. Communism by fluffernutter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Imagine that. A communist country overtaking a capitalist country in terms of innovation and quality of living. This goes against many discussions I have had here.

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    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  5. Re: Enjoy shitting over a hole in the ground by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It is absolutely true that Chinese stuff *has been* inferior copied CRAP.

    But... you don't expect that to be true FOREVER, do you?

    If you are old enough, consider the development of Japan. After WW2, they produced pure junk, and badly copied junk at that. In the 1970s Made in Japan was the punchline that Made in China is now. But by 1980, Japanese was a solid brand. Innovation too. The thing is, first you crawl, then you walk, then you run. China is no longer in the crawling phase.