FIVE YEARS AGO, CHINESE recruiters held a tea party at an office in Los Angeles. The get-together was Beijing's quaint attempt to woo Chinese students back to the mainland to live, work and presumably prosper. "Even the sun and moon are new in China," an official told the assembled crowd. "We hope you come back and help construct the motherland."
Bill Gu, who was studying at the University of Southern California, was one of several students in attendance. He sat there, sipping his tea, marveling at the officials' badly cut suits and ill-considered sales pitch. Gu was utterly underwhelmed by the apparatchiks' offer. They seemed actually to believe that state-sector jobs, two-bedroom apartments and education for his kids could entice him to forsake the American dream. "They even promised Beijing or Shanghai residency for the students' children," he recalls. "They think we are a bunch of peasants trying to get into the big cities? My children were born in America; they're American citizens." Gu quickly came to the conclusion that the Beijing recruiters had come to the United States merely to scam a vacation. He went home disgusted.
Gu left China in 1989. He was part of the great student exodus that began in the early 1980s, when the late patriarch Deng Xiaoping encouraged the best and the brightest to go overseas, learn and then bring back the intellectual motherlode to the motherland. For many years, particularly after the Tiananmen crackdown, students like Gu preferred to stay put overseas. They liked the freedom of speech, the superior education system and the abundant opportunities available in America, Britain, Australia and other countries.
But before long they began to hear about momentous changes in China - the new market-oriented economy, the growing tolerance for citizens' views and, especially, the potential millions to be made in the mainland. China, it seemed, was gradually becoming a nation they could actually be proud of; some overseas students discovered a latent love for their homeland. If China was ready for them, well, they were ready for China.
In 1996, two years after the tea party in Los Angeles, Bill Gu went back to hometown Shanghai, armed with a PhD in material science. His decision to return had nothing to do with the official recruiters; he went home on his own recognizance. Ironically, he wound up a recruiter himself, for the American headhunting firm Korn/Ferry International. Now Gu is cherry-picking from among the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fellow overseas students who are heading home in increasing numbers to seek their fortune.
Exactly how many are re-entering is hard to ascertain because no one keeps such figures. But Prof. David Zweig of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology estimates that the number of returnees has been growing at 15% every year since 1994. Zweig says he predicted the trend when he co-wrote China's Brain Drain to the United States in 1995. About a third of the students he interviewed for the book said that they planned to return.
Students told him their main motivation was the improved social standing they assumed they would find at home, plus deeply felt patriotism. For the most part, Zweig says, this is a male phenomenon. Women are less likely to return, he reports, because they prefer the foreign lifestyle, as well as the educational opportunities for their children. Moreover, women often believe their careers will founder in the mainland.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the homeward trickle has become a flood of late. This is due in part to the fact that many of the students who left in the 1980s are now in their mid-30s and early 40s, an age when people generally make - or change - career direction. That's partly why Qian Ning, 40, went home in 1995 after five years of teaching Chinese at the University of Michigan. "I was getting to the age where I had to make a decision about where I was going to live," says the bestselling author of Studying in America, who also happens to be the son of Deputy Premier Qian Qichen. "At the age of 30-something you have to make choices."
The homing instinct is crucial to China's development - as Deng fully realized nearly 20 years ago. He may well have taken his cue from Taiwan, where returning students in the 1970s helped transform the island into a technology powerhouse. Thanks at least in part to the individualism and lateral thinking encouraged in Western schools, Taiwan has built a nimble economy that is the envy of Asia. To keep its own modernization on track, China requires similar dynamism and expertise.
For the most part, mainland returnees are seeking opportunities with joint ventures or fast-rising private firms that offer better perks and working conditions than the state-sector alternatives. Some set up their own companies. Perhaps the best known of this breed is Charles Zhang, the founder of Internet firm Sohu.com. Other hardy souls opt for government jobs that allow them to bring fresh blood and ideas to policy-making. As Singapore's Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew recently told Asiaweek: "If the Chinese want to grow fast, they must be flexible to reabsorb the 100,000-200,000 able Chinese who are abroad in America and Europe." |
