|
|
|
|
|
| March 28, 2000 | atimes.com | ||
|
|
China
THE MIDDLE KINGDOM: Brain drain pain By Bradley Martin Even with all the noise made recently on issues surrounding the Taiwan election, mainlanders could still hear all too clearly in the background the giant sucking sound made by overseas universities and companies luring away the brightest youngsters. Brain drain, much on the minds of delegates to this month's meetings of the National People's Congress (NPC) and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), had long been a focus of the state-run news media, especially the Xinhua news agency. Some of the coverage predictably had been of the cheerleading variety. ''Chinese Soldiers Marching Toward the World'', a year-end Xinhua dispatch, boasted that the ''overwhelming majority'' of some 2,000 soldiers sent abroad for study by the General Logistics Department of the People's Liberation Army had returned following their studies ''to become fresh troops in the modernization of our Army's logistics''. Among civilians, Zhang Chaoyang, a returned overseas student who became head of Sohu - which a Xinhua article this month described as ''one of the biggest networking firms in China'' - has been held up as a model for the younger generation, ''a hero of the Internet-era''. But increasingly the coverage is straightforward and realistic, befitting the serious nature of the problem. The picture that emerges from a number of reports is of a concerted effort to sweeten the pot for graduates - especially scientists and engineers - who are willing to return home to work after their overseas educations. Localities competing with other localities for scarce bodies have intensified the campaign. For example, remote Yunnan Province in the southwest has set up, within its Kunming High-Tech Development Zone, a ''special area'' for returnees from overseas studies. It will give them the same incentives offered to overseas investors. Yunnan also offers a bonus of up to 3 million yuan for an outstanding contribution to the development of science, technology and/or the local economy. Perhaps relatively fashionable Hangzhou, capital of coastal Jiangsu Province, shouldn't have to compete as hard as Yunnan - but it does. Huangzhou returnees likewise can register their new businesses as if they were foreign-invested, paying a cheap $1,000 registration fee. In addition, they are entitled to lower-than-normal taxation of their overseas earnings. There's an 80 million yuan fund to assist them as they set up their businesses, and a 20 million yuan fund to provide Yunnan-style awards for ''remarkable contributions''. The magnitude of the rewards offered suggests how big a job it could be to reverse the flow. And delegates to the recent NPC and CPPCC sessions clearly recognized that the country has its work cut out for it. Xinhua quoted Professor Zhu Qingshi, president of the University of Science and Technology of China, as telling fellow NPC delegates that ''very few'' USTC students who've gone abroad for further studies have returned home. For all of China, according to official statistics that the agency cited, nearly 200,000 students who have gone abroad since Deng Xiaoping launched his reform and opening campaign in the late 1970s have failed to return home. That's two thirds of the total. Worse, 80 percent of the non-returnees studied engineering or science. The Ministry of Education, Xinhua reports, hopes to keep more students from leaving in the first place by improving the curriculum in Chinese schools. But that's not a complete answer because even those who never leave - not to mention those who leave but decide to return - tend to be susceptible to the lure of foreign-invested firms in China. The central government is trying, like the localities, to throw money at the problem. The Chinese Academy of Sciences recently got a 600 million yuan allocation to lure senior scientists who are working overseas. The Ministry of Education has given three times that much to elite Beijing University and Qinghua University so they can reward top faculty members who stick around. But at least some of the authorities seem to realize it's not just a matter of money. Accounts of job-fairs suggest that foreign firms tend to have a distinct edge in the image category. For one thing, they are reputed to promote capable people regardless of age, in contrast to the Confucian system that tends still to prevail in locally owned firms. Changing the reality of locally owned workplaces so that their image will then change is where ''heroes of the Internet age'' come in. Besides Zhang Chaoyang, there's Liu Chuanzhi, president of computer-maker Legend Group, who boasts of having succeeded in just that sort of culture change. His employees' average age is 28.6 years and managers' average 31, Xinhua quoted Liu as saying. Then there's the Founder Group of Beijing, which offers an employee shareholders' plan. Eschewing the communist security blanket that promised distribution to each according to need, group founder and NPC delegate Wang Xuan is quoted to saying that to each ''according to work'' is the way to get the loyalty of young high-tech hotshots. (Special to Asia Times Online) |
|||||||||
|
|
|
Front | China | Southeast Asia | Japan | Koreas | India/Pakistan | Central Asia/Russia | Oceania Business Briefs | Global Economy | Asian Crisis | Media/IT | Editorials | Letters | Search/Archive Cheap Airline Tickets to Taiyuan China |
|
back to the top ©2000 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd. Asia Times Online is designed and produced by Multimedia Asia Co., Ltd. |
