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Chinese Workers Abandon Silicon Valley for Riches Back Home

(www.bloomberg.com)
219 points thisisit | 2 comments | 11 Jan 18 16:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.018s | source
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ryanianian ◴[11 Jan 18 19:09 UTC] No.16126766[source]▶
It is understandable why somebody would want to return to their home-country. The "Bamboo Ceiling" the article discusses is incredibly concerning. It's America's loss for sure.

I'm curious (1) how much of these people's education or experience was subsidized by the American economy and (2) how common the same situation is in China (i.e. US expats training up in China and taking that expertise back to the US).

If (1) and (2) aren't aligned, it could be one of the factors contributing to the growing sense that we pour a bunch of money into higher-ed without seeing much return.

I don't mean this from a US nationalist or political perspective - I'm merely speculating on the economics. Are the incentives for coming to the country aligned for both the person and the country? Many companies will pay for employees to go to grad-school but demand repayment if the employee isn't still with the company N years later. Would such a system for college/work visas make any sense to help keep talent?

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1. coliveira ◴[11 Jan 18 21:31 UTC] No.16128091[source]▶
Regarding (1), I think it is the opposite. The US benefits from high quality free education paid by the Chinese government when these individuals come to do graduate studies and to work in US companies. In fact the same happens when bright people from all over the world comes to the US: it is known as brain-drain, a process by which the US benefits from highly educated people coming from countries that spent a lot of money to create a public school system.
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2. gota ◴[12 Jan 18 09:46 UTC] No.16131651[source]▶
This is exactly what is listed under the US section of the wikipedia article:

"he country as a whole does not experience large-scale human capital flight as compared with other countries, with an emigration rate of only 0.7 per 1,000 educated people,[199] but it is often the destination of skilled workers migrating from elsewhere in the world.[200]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight#United_St...