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China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

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Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

#151

Post by AbrahamParangi »

r0m4n0 wrote: post #141
DevX101 wrote: post #123

The bigger impact isn't luring U.S. scientists to China. It's keeping top Chinese scientists/students in China. Chinese grad students/postdocs are highly represented at elite U.S. universities. With recent political changes in the U.S. making more difficult for international students to come to the U.S. or at least giving the impression that the U.S. is not as friendly to immigration, enrollment from international st…

I am employed by one of the big tech companies in the bay and was recently chosen to interview candidates for our new grad program. I was astonished by how many top of class graduate students we brought into the program that had identical backgrounds. Around 90% had studied in and were from China, usually undergrad there and Ivy League grad school with close to perfect GPAs. If they are keeping their students, I have…

The presence of Chinese students interviewing for your grad program says nothing about the percentage of equivalent performance students who choose to remain in China.

Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

#152

Post by cauldron »

stochastic_monk wrote: post #56
whatshisface wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is not the easiest language to learn, but Mandarin is among the hardest.

I’ve heard similar things about English being among the harder languages to learn. I think it depends more on what kind of language you already know.

The basic grammer is kinda hard if you aren't exposed to similar languages or didn't learn it in school, but after that I'd say it's one of the easiest.

Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

#153

Post by cauldron »

my_first_acct wrote: post #71
dqpb wrote: post #24

This may not be accurate, but I feel like the US benefited a lot from many foreigners knowing English. This does not seem to be the case for Chinese, though I imagine that will change.

Because of the difficult writing system (thousands of characters to memorize, rather than a mere 26), Mandarin is unlikely to replace English as a world language.

And quality of mandarin content is deterioting ever faster these days, thanks to low quality school education, generally shit-tier English translators, and the self-media sensationalism cottage industry that Wechat and Toutiao from Bytedance helped created.

Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

#156

Post by seanmcdirmid »

gowld wrote: post #108
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn’t too long ago (the 90s?) when all foreigners were thought to be spies and needed minders to travel outside of big cities. It is obviously much better now, but not all of that sentiment has washed out (see recent Beijing subway posters encouraging girls not to spill state secrets to foreign boyfriends). I’m not really sure when someone would say bias has crossed over into xenophobia, they are not very disting…

Do Chinese girls know a lot of state secrets? No need to answer if you are still in China at the moment.

State secrets are not really that secret, and ya, it does sound rediculous and a bit ignorant.

Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

#157

Post by fma »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #35
echevil wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I guess the first step would be luring Chinese scientists currently in US back to China (many of those have US citizenship and would also be counted as US scientists)

I work with lots of Chinese scientists and they say they are never going back. They don't trust Chinese papers or labs at all.

If you are taking a sample of Chinese scientists 10 years into their career in the US with kids here, then likely true.

My sample based on my circle of Chinese PhD students that have graduated in the last 5 years indicates a more willingness to go back and several have.

Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

#158

Post by nopinsight »

citilife wrote: post #3

I don't really think China is luring too many U.S. scientists... Most of the scientists I know pretty much ignore research out of China, because a large portion of it is just not replicable (and / or lies).

> Most of the scientists I know pretty much ignore research out of China ...

Ranking by the 1% most highly cited papers in math and computing for those published between 2013-2016:

6 of the top 15 universities are in mainland China,

6 USA,

2 Singapore, and

1 Hong Kong.

Tsinghua is at number 1. Singapore also seems to employ a number of researchers from China.

The article does state that MIT still leads in the broader STEM fields, but Tsinghua may soon take over.

“The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (mit) still leads in the top 1% of stem papers, but Mr Marginson says Tsinghua is on track to be “number one in five years or less”.”

https://www.economist.com/china/2018/11/17/tsinghua-universi...

Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

#159

Post by seanmcdirmid »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #151
r0m4n0 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am employed by one of the big tech companies in the bay and was recently chosen to interview candidates for our new grad program. I was astonished by how many top of class graduate students we brought into the program that had identical backgrounds. Around 90% had studied in and were from China, usually undergrad there and Ivy League grad school with close to perfect GPAs. If they are keeping their students, I have…

The presence of Chinese students interviewing for your grad program says nothing about the percentage of equivalent performance students who choose to remain in China.

Surely, it just says that we keep getting a lot of great students from China.

The number of returnees has risen, but so has the overall number of non-returnees (the result of a lot more Chinese students studying in the states).

Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

#160

Post by seanmcdirmid »

gowld wrote: post #107
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there is also a bit of xenophobia against foreigners that they have to sort out. It manifests in weird ways, like not being able to give foreigner employees options in local companies. Keep in mind that the number of foreigners in China is about the same as the number of foreigners in Tokyo.

Why do they have to sort it out? I presume that financial equivalents to options are allowed, but that China forbids foreigners controlling non-cash capital in China, since that complicates the Communist's Party's exercise of authoritarian power over the operation of the nation.

If they want foreigners to come and work in China, being open to that and treating them more equally is a nice way of achieving that goal.
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