The End of Chinatown

[Infohawk]

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/12/the-end-of-chinatown/8732/

Recent years have seen stories of Chinese “sea turtles”—those who are educated overseas and migrate back to China—lured by Chinese-government incentives that include financial aid, cash bonuses, tax breaks, and housing assistance. In 2008, Shi Yigong, a molecular biologist at Princeton, turned down a prestigious $10 million research grant to return to China and become the dean of life sciences at Beijing’s Tsinghua University. “My postdocs are getting great offers,” says Robert H. Austin, a physics professor at Princeton.

But unskilled laborers are going back, too. Labor shortages in China have led to both higher wages and more options in where they can work. The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.–based think tank, published a paper on China’s demography through 2030 that says thinking of migration as moving in just one direction is a mistake: the flows are actually much more dynamic. “Migration, the way we understand it in the U.S., is about people coming, staying, and dying in our country. The reality is that it has never been that way,” says the institute’s president, Demetrios Papademetriou. “Historically, over 50 percent of the people who came here in the first half of the 20th century left. In the second half, the return migration slowed down to 25, 30 percent. But today, when we talk about China, what you’re actually seeing is more people going back … This may still be a trickle, in terms of our data being able to capture it—there’s always going to be a lag time of a couple of years—but with the combination of bad labor conditions in the U.S. and sustained or better conditions back in China, increasing numbers of people will go home.”

I'm less concerned with the fact people are leaving the US than I am with the fact that the US is transferring one of its remaining strengths abroad: knowledge. We are training foreigners and they are taking the knowledge back to their own country. Meanwhile, that is one less spot for an American to learn advanced subjects. Even if they pay their tuition, most major universities have a huge chunk paid for by the federal government. The end result is we are paying to educate our competition.

It's interesting that in the first half of the 20th century, 50% of migrants returned home (largely to Europe since that is where most migrants came from). Of course back then, the university system was quite different and migrants had to put in quite a bit of time to become part of the educated upper-middle class.

 

[Baptismbyfire]

Doesn't apply as much to science and technology-related fields, but there is a reason why there are scholarships, such as the Fulbright Scholarship, giving large scholarships to foreign students. In the end, it helps out the US because many students ultimately return home, and rise up the ladder to hold important positions, with pro-Western leaning, gradually opening up the society. This is commonly see in economics, political studies, and even law.

 

[Infohawk]

Doesn't apply as much to science and technology-related fields, but there is a reason why there are scholarships, such as the Fulbright Scholarship, giving large scholarships to foreign students. In the end, it helps out the US because many students ultimately return home, and rise up the ladder to important positions, with pro-Western leaning, gradually opening up the society.

Fullbright is yet another example of a Cold War era program that doesn't make sense in the 21st century. Nobody's debating whether their country should be communist anymore. Free trade is the norm. We're now in a world of intense international economic competition.

 

[Baptismbyfire]

Fullbright is yet another example of a Cold War era program that doesn't make sense in the 21st century. Nobody's debating whether their country should be communist anymore. Free trade is the norm. We're now in a world of intense international economic competition.

Free trade still isn't the norm in all parts of the world though. It is only the developed nations, who claim that free trade should be the norm. What is ironic is that these very same nations had very protectionist stance (and in some respect, still do) earlier in their history.

And it goes beyond just free trade. When it comes to deciding what model to base your country off of, Asian and other less developed countries have the alternative of choosing between the US and the European model. I know many bash the European model, but there are areas where the European model outperforms the US system, such as the public education system.

You are basically sending students abroad, who are smart but know relatively little, to become dependent on their professors, whom they have to cling to if they want to survive in the field. They form life-long connections there, and then return home with the pro-US stance, not just in free trade, but even when it comes to matters of national security, such as choosing whom your ally is. Then they rise up the social ladder to become professors, politicians, and what not, and they form their little groups and cut off access to anyone who do not have the same background as they do.

Yes, it's not the Cold War Era, but I still see scholarship programs as definitely promoting US interests, at least in some areas like I mentioned above.