Reference Message Network reported on April 4th according to a report from the Singapore Straits Times website on March 30th, the consecutive exposure of news about top scientists returning to China for employment has brought renewed attention to the "return wave" of Chinese scientific talents.

The Straits Times found that at least 17 top scientists have returned to China since last year, most of them coming from the fields of mathematics and physics.

It was reported that these "returning" scholars joined institutions including traditional top schools such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, and the University of Science and Technology of China, as well as some newly established research institutions and schools in recent years.

For instance, Westlake University, which was founded in 2018, is a private research university located in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Last year, it successively attracted three overseas top scientists to take up positions, including Hua-Yi Chen, former professor of the Department of Mathematics at Paris-Cité University in France, Xiaoming Zhang, former director of the Anatomy Teaching Center at Baylor College of Medicine in the U.S., and Xu-Jia Wang, a mathematician who taught for 20 years at the Australian National University.

Recent returnee Huaxin Lin, a former mathematics professor at the University of Oregon in the U.S., joined the Shanghai Institute of Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences, a new research institution established just over a year ago. Supported by Shanghai, Yangpu District, and Fudan University, this institute is led by renowned Chinese-American mathematician Shing-Tung Yau. Its goal is to build an integrated platform for basic research, talent aggregation, and cultivation. Within less than a year and a half of its establishment, it has already attracted several top mathematicians, including Kefeng Liu, who taught for over 20 years at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Lim Ming Howe, assistant professor of public policy and global affairs at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, analyzed in an interview that an increasing number of Chinese scholars are choosing to return home. This is partly due to China's more attractive incentive measures in terms of compensation, subsidies, and laboratories for recruiting top scientists; on the other hand, it is related to the growing sense of crisis among Chinese scientists abroad due to targeted actions against them.

According to reports, China's R&D expenditure reached over 3.6 trillion yuan last year, increasing by 8.3% year-on-year, higher than the overall economic growth rate of 5%. Currently, R&D expenditure ranks second globally, just after the United States.

The report pointed out that over 75% of the above-mentioned "returnees" are from the U.S. This is not only because there are many Chinese scholars in the U.S., but also possibly related to the U.S.'s increased pressure on suppressing Chinese scholars in recent years.

It was reported that Shing-Tung Yau also left the U.S., where he had lived for over 50 years, to teach full-time at Tsinghua University in 2022. In an interview last December, he said that over the past decade, the U.S. government has shown severe discrimination towards Chinese scientists. These scientists have no choice but to leave, as they can only perform at their best in a supportive research environment.

Yau warned that such talent outflow is unfortunate for the U.S., as it will weaken its research capabilities.

A report released in January this year by Dongbi Technology Data in Shenzhen showed that the number of top science and technology talents in China increased from 18,805 in 2020 to 32,511 in 2024, with the global share rising from 17% to 28%. By contrast, the number of top scientists in the U.S. decreased from 36,599 in 2020 to 31,781 last year, with the global share dropping from 33% to 27%.

Exterior view of the Shanghai Institute of Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences (Xinhua News Agency).

Original source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7489290100505936436/

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