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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: roto who wrote (15833)	7/25/2024 10:51:13 AM
From: roto	Respond to of 15987

not smart.. US China Initiative a ‘significant push factor’ for Chinese scientists’ exodus •The number of ethnic Chinese scientists leaving America to return to China increased 75 per cent after launch of 2018 China Initiative Ling Xinin Ohio Published: 10:00pm, 25 Jul 2024 The number of Chinese-born scientists leaving the US increased 75 per cent after the launch of the 2018 China Initiative, a study has found. Photo: Shutterstock A growing number of ethnic Chinese scientists have chosen to leave America to return to China in recent years – an exodus accelerated by a US government probe which attempted to combat economic espionage but ended up prosecuting academics, a Stanford University study has found. While most China-born, US-based scientists intend to stay in the United States, departures have grown steadily, from 900 in 2010 to 2,621 in 2021. And since the 2018 implementation of the “China Initiative”, there has been a 75 per cent increase in Chinese scientists leaving the US, according to the team of researchers from the Stanford Centre on China’s Economy and Institutions. Meanwhile, the percentage of those leaving the US who chose to relocate to mainland China and Hong Kong increased from 48 per cent in 2010 to 67 per cent in 2021, according to the findings published on July 15. “Chinese immigrants have become a large and visible demographic group in American science, technology and engineering. However, the pressure of potential federal investigations since the 2018 launch of the China Initiative … have provided scientists of Chinese descent in the US with higher incentive to leave and lower incentive to apply for federal grants,” the researchers wrote. While attracting and retaining scientific talent from China “is important for continued US leadership in science”, the team wrote, the numbers suggest achieving that “requires alleviating fears and cultivating a welcoming environment for conducting scientific research”. The US Department of Justice reportedly investigated thousands of scientists suspected of hiding Chinese connections under the China Initiative, which was launched during former president Donald Trump’s administration. Most cases were quickly dropped due to lack of evidence, and the programme was scrapped in 2022. However, the probe has been criticised for causing far-reaching damage, from devastating academic careers and disrupting lives to creating a chilling effect on the scientific community and US-China collaboration. Earlier this month, former University of Kansas chemist Franklin Feng Tao was acquitted of his final conviction under the China Initiative, after a five-year legal battle that has left his family in severe financial difficulties. In their study, the Stanford team used the database Microsoft Academic Graph, tracking the publications of over 200 million scientists through to 2021, to identify a total of 19,955 scientists of Chinese descent who began their careers in the US but later left for other countries, including China. Chinese-born chemical engineer Professor Franklin Tao was arrested during the China Initiative, but later cleared of all charges. Photo: science.org They found the number of departures steadily increased from 2010 across major STEM fields, such as life sciences, engineering and computer science, and mathematics and physical sciences. While this change was partly due to “pull factors” from China, with heavy investment in science and competitive compensation offered to returnees, the China Initiative appeared to be “a significant push factor”, the researchers wrote. In a separate online survey conducted with more than 1,300 US-based, ethnic Chinese scientists, the researchers hoped to better understand the long-term impact of the China Initiative on the scientific community. They found that 42 per cent were “fearful of conducting research” in the US, while 65 per cent worried about collaborations with China. More than 70 per cent of those surveyed “did not feel safe as an academic researcher in the US”. Nearly half of the participants who had received federal grants now wished to avoid applying for them, they also found. On top of that, 61 per cent said they had considered leaving the country – a sharp contrast to a decade ago when nearly 90 per cent of China-born junior researchers said they would stay in the US. “Despite an overall fearful sentiment, 89 per cent of respondents indicated their desire to contribute to US leadership in science and technology,” the team wrote. archive.ph .

To: roto who wrote (15833)	7/25/2024 11:31:52 AM
From: roto	Respond to of 15987

& the dipshits in the West inadvertently agree with Xi by making Chinese immigration difficult? China slaps travel restrictions on teachers, banking sector staff The ban appears to target teachers and students thinking of visiting overseas universities, commentators say. By Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin 2024.07.19 Travelers wait for their trains at Shanghai Hongqiao railway station, in Shanghai, China Feb. 7, 2024. Nicoco Chan/Reuters Chinese authorities are extending travel restrictions to teachers, schoolchildren and bank staff ahead of summer vacation by requiring them to hand over their passports or ask permission before leaving the country, according to documents posted by social media users this week. The fresh bans are the latest in a slew of travel restrictions on Chinese citizens that began after President Xi Jinping took power in 2012 and intensified during the three years of COVID-19 restrictions. One notice received by a user working at a high school in the western city of Lanzhou asks class monitors to compile a list of students who have passports and hand it in to the school, according to a screenshot posted to WeChat. A June 25 notice sent to staff in an unnamed county cited orders from the county education bureau as saying that all current teaching staff must hand over their passports to the school's party office, a new administrative office formed in a recent bid to install direct ruling Communist Party control over the country's universities. "The party office will make a list ... and the county education bureau personnel department will hold this information," reads the notice, which was reposted by citizen journalist "Mr Li is not your teacher" to their X account. "Each department is requested to forward this information to all groups." In another post also reposted by "Mr Li," a person holds a form that must be filled in and endorsed by their employer before they can apply for a passport. Tourists visit the Forbidden City in central Beijing, China, July 17, 2024. (Jason Lee/Reuters) Commentators said the flurry of notices appears to target teachers and students who may be thinking of leaving China to tour overseas universities or to settle into their new homes ahead of a course of overseas study. An online search by Radio Free Asia on Friday found that rules restricting foreign travel have been publicly posted to the websites of several universities and education institutions across China. Faculty at the computer science department of Wuhan University are required to hand over any passports within seven days of receiving them to university authorities “for safekeeping,” according to a notice dated April 2023. At Zhejiang’s Taizhou University, faculty and staff wishing to travel overseas for personal reasons must first obtain approval from the personnel department, according to a notice dated October 2019. A similar notice on the website of the Shanghai University of Sport dates to April 2014. In 2018, RFA reported that teachers in Inner Mongolia, Shandong and Fujian provinces had been ordered to hand in their passports. Travel bans Xi's administration has long issued travel bans to rights activists, dissidents, human rights lawyers and their families, with similar policies seen in Tibet and Xinjiang in the wake of mass demonstrations and uprisings by disgruntled ethnic minority populations in 2008 and 2009. But the practice of recalling passports intensified during the three years of Xi Jinping's zero-COVID policy, as online searches about how to emigrate to another country spiked on Chinese search engines. Tourists from mainland China board a train at the Lo Wu border control point in Hong Kong on May 1, 2024, at the start of the Golden Week holiday period. (Peter Parks/AFP) In 2022, the National Immigration Administration held a news conference announcing "strict reviews" of travel documents and visas, and calling on Chinese nationals not to leave the country unless absolutely necessary, while border police started clipping the passports of returning Chinese citizens, rendering them invalid. The bans haven't been applied consistently across the country, and hundreds of thousands of people have managed to leave China to start a new life overseas since pandemic restrictions ended in late 2022, in what has been dubbed the "run" movement. But sources told RFA Mandarin that the de facto travel bans are continuing despite the end of pandemic restrictions, and don't just apply to those in education, either. Tourists from mainland China visit the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront in Hong Kong on May 1, 2024, at the start of the Golden Week holiday period. (Peter Parks/AFP) "Anyone working in the banking system now has to apply to leave the country at least 10 working days in advance," a banking sector employee from the southern province of Guangdong who gave only the surname Wang for fear of reprisals told RFA Mandarin. "There are restrictions on the number of times you can leave the country in any given year." "Some cities only let you leave the country once a year, some twice," she said. "Basically, they now discourage people from leaving the country." Several rounds of approvals A resident of the central city of Wuhan with family ties to the education sector told RFA Mandarin that any trip to Hong Kong must go through several rounds of approvals and be reported to the local government's education bureau. "The school has to approve it first, then the district education bureau, then finally it's sent to the municipal education bureau which must approve it before you can leave China," the resident, who gave only the surname Li for fear of reprisals, said. Travelers walk with their luggage outside the Beijing railway station in Beijing, China Feb. 18, 2024. (Florence Lo/Reuters) "Some teachers may now be prevented from taking their kids overseas during summer vacation," she said. Veteran rights activist and former teacher He Peirong, who now lives overseas, said the restrictions seem aimed at parents looking to send their children overseas to study as a first step towards emigration by the whole family. "Sending their children overseas to study is the first step towards emigration," He said. "It's a very safe way to transfer assets, and to eventually emigrate." She said some parents take their kids overseas in summer to get them accustomed to life in another country, or to help them settle in before their academic course starts in the fall. *Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.* rfa.org .