Pro-Beijing publications have written constantly about the possibility of a “reverse head deplete,” where more and more Chinese researchers are leaving America for jobs in China, in response to concerns that the Trump administration’s China Initiative effort may return.  ,
The Protect America’s Innovation and Economic Security From CCP Act, which calls for the restoration of the canceled China Initiative system, was passed by the Republican-dominated US House of Representatives on September 9.
- espionage,
- robbery of trade secrets and intellectual property
- challenges posed by the Chinese government to critical equipment.
The proposed policy needs to be approved by the US Senate, where Democrats currently hold the majority, before it can become laws. And it needs the name of the US President, who at the time is a Democrat.
In a statement released on September 10, the Biden presidency stated that it opposes this act. It said it has worked to overcome challenges posed by trade-secret fraud, hackers and economic spy, including by stars affiliated with China.  ,
The Department of Justice’s capability to evaluate and prosecute such legal action may be undermined by grouping cases in the manner contemplated by this policy, including by putting more pressure on the DOJ to secure witness and victim teamwork,” it said.  ,
Additionally, the bill, according to it, could lead to inaccurate and damaging common perceptions that the DOJ uses a different standard to look into and prosecute criminal behavior committed against Chinese citizens or Americans of Chinese heritage.  ,
The outcome of the US national election on November 5 does alter how Washington views the subject. And that chance has had an impact on US experts who might be affected.
The China Daily, a mouth of the Chinese Communist Party, said in August that some experts of Chinese origin in the US were leaving the country because of the “push issue” of the China Initiative, plus some “pull components” from China.
Citing a Stanford study that has the subject” Slow mental dump” Exploring changes among Chinese experts in the US”, the paper said 19, 955 experts of Chinese descent, who began their careers in the US, had left for other countries, including China, between 2010 and 2021.
The Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions (SCCEI ) published the study in July. Its data was derived from a paper published in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS ) in June 2023.  ,
Before Trump’s campaign for the China Initiative and the 2017 presidential election, the figures were released in a year that marked the start of the statistics. However, according to the study, the number of experts from China-born who are moving out of the US has gradually increased from 900 in 2010 to 2, 621 in 2021. According to the report, “pull factors” include China’s significant and expanding investment in technology and the lucrative economic benefits associated with positions in Chinese institutions.
According to the review, the vast majority of the 5,800 Foreign students who received degrees in science and engineering in 2020 made the decision to remain in the US.  ,
Long-term be rates
According to the South China Morning Post, hundreds of Chinese scientists, including gets Song Sun, molecular researcher Fu Xiangdong, and scientist Sun Xin, have recently switched institutions from American universities to Chinese ones over the past few years.  ,
How many Taiwanese PhD graduates have chosen to remain in the US for the duration was never disclosed by the Hong Kong-based newspapers.
In April 2022, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology ( CSET ), a policy research organization within Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, said that, as of February 2017, 77 % of the more than 178, 000 international science, technology, engineering and mathmatics (STEM) PhD graduates from US universities between 2000 and 2015 were still living in the country. According to the article, these great long-term remain rates are comparable across all different STEM fields.
It said about 90 % of the 55, 000 Chinese nationals and 87 % of the 28, 000 Indian nationals who completed STEM PhD programs in the US between 2000 and 2015 were still living in the country, compared with 66 % of graduates from other countries.  ,
It translates to the decision of about 50, 000 Taiwanese PhD alumni in STEM fields to remain in the US during that time.  ,
Some past
The Trump presidency launched the China Initiative programme in November 2018 to attack hundreds of well-known Chinese-American academics and scientists, alleging they had links to foreign countries.  ,
Charles Lieber, an American scientist and a nanotechnologist at Stanford University, was arrested in January 2020 according to his relations to China’s Thousand Talents Program.  , In December 2021, he was convicted of two felony counts of making false statements to the FBI and researchers. Additionally, he was found guilty of four counts of using bags of cash to travel from Wuhan to Boston and file false income returns.
Chen Gang, an American mechanical engineer from China and a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT ), was detained in January 2021 on suspicion of allegedly concealing posts held in China in a grant application he submitted to the US Department of Energy in 2017. The Department of Justice, by then under the Biden administration, dropped the charges in January 2022.
On February 22, 2022, the DOJ ended the China Initiative. Last month, China renamed the Thousand Talents Program, which aims to attract international experts aged below 40 to operate in China, giving it the title Qiming Program.
America’s ‘ sweet power ‘ ,
The Stanford report was written by a group led by Xie Yu, a Chinese-American psychologist at Princeton University. According to a 2017 Chinese content, Xie was the head teacher of Peking University’s Thousand Talents Program.  ,
He told China’s Caijing magazine in an interview in April this year that the US will continue to lead the field for many more years thanks to” soft power,” in this case an environment that supports individual creativity and prevents authority, while highlighting the “reverse brain drain” phenomenon in his report last year.  ,
” China now has money and expertise but it lacks the social ground for unique and cutting-edge medical innovations”, he said. ” Chinese traditions, which emphasizes respecting power, is more likely to doing repetitive and flexible work”.
He claimed that China is far from being a knock-out sweet power like the US.
Read: Beijing slams US for deporting Foreign learners
Observe Jeff Pao on Twitter at , @jeffpao3