A recent lecture at a conference in Sanya, China, at a conference run by CCG, was published by the Financial Times,  David Zweig 6 December 2018

INTRODUCTION: Confucius, in the Analects, argued that if names are not correct and “language is not in accord with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried out successfully”.

The US-China trade dispute is a case in point. Two misnomers must be corrected if we are to understand what the future is likely to bring. First, this is not a trade war. The fight over trade is merely a skirmish in a larger technology war, which itself is a component of a long struggle between a global hegemon — the US — seeking to maintain its dominance, and an ascending challenger — China — that feels it has a moral right to reclaim its status as a great power.

For years, China has sought to appropriate western technology through various means. Accusations of cyber theft and encroachment of intellectual property rights ring true. Forcing US companies to transfer technology to their Chinese partners as they enter the Chinese market harms Americans when their erstwhile partners go global. The Thousand Talents Plan, set up 10 years ago to reverse China’s brain drain, became problematic when some Chinese professors in the US were rewarded by the Communist Party for setting up labs in the mainland based on the knowledge they had acquired abroad.

Article Link:
FT.com

Paper presented at the conference on “Bridging Minds Across the Pacific
The 25-Year Sino-U.S. Educational Exchange,” Fudan University, Shanghai, November 10-11

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Repository.ust.hk/ir/Record/1783.1-12377

负担教育论坛, v. 7, (1), 2004, p. 39-47
Zweig, David; Rosen, Stanley

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Repository.ust.hk/ir/Record/1783.1-49842

Hong Kong Political Science Association, August 2010, Baptist Univ., HK
Zweig, David

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Repository.ust.hk/ir/Record/1783.1-39409

Presented at the 8th Guangzhou Conference on Returnees, Ministry of Education, Guangzhou (in Chinese), 27
Zweig, David

INTRODUCTION:

A unique quality of China’s efforts to encourage people trained overseas to return and work in China is the fact that so many levels of government and organizations actively promote returnees. While the national government sets broad guidelines for policy, and moulds the overall socio-economic and political climate, many institutions have actively engaged in generating a return wave. Also over the past 20 years, these different levels of government and organizations have changed the way they view and recruit returnees largely due to their divergent interests.

Early on, city governments learned to compete among themselves over returnees. However, the central government had to go through a serious learning process, where it recognized that the best way to improve science and technology in China was by letting people go abroad freely, and then compete for them in the international marketplace by creating a domestic environment that could attract them back. And while leaders of academic, scientific and business institutions initially may have harboured serious concerns about returnees, because their knowledge threatened those who did not go overseas, China’s internationalized economic, scientific and educational system has led most institutions to value, if not overvalue, the contributions that returnees can make.

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Repository.ust.hk/ir/Record/1783.1-11382

欧美同学2006北京论坛文集，留学研究, Beijing, October 28 2006, p. 31-37
Zweig, David

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Repository.ust.hk/ir/Record/1783.1-49834

Keynote speech at the 10th National Metropolis Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 9 October 2007
Zweig, David

Date: Monday, 20 April 2009
Time: 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Venue: SO-102, Dorothy Y. L. Wong Building, Lingnan University
Language: English

Abstract:

Since 1978, over 1.3 million Chinese students and scholars have gone overseas from China to study and do research. To date, over 390,000 have returned; many have also settled in Hong Kong.

What role do they play in China’s post-Mao era? Prof Zweig has been doing research on this topic since the early 1990s, involving hundreds of interviews, over 7 surveys of returnees (since 1997), some carried out with the Chinese Ministry of Education and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as well as surveys and interviews with mainlanders who have chosen to stay abroad. He has published about 10 research papers on the topic and is currently writing a book on the “hai gui pai.”

Biography:

David Zweig is Chair Professor, Division of Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Director of the Center on China’s Transnational Relations. He writes extensively on China’s relationship to the outside world, particularly China’s overseas student diaspora and returnees to the mainland, Hong Kong-mainland ties, and China’s “resource diplomacy”.

Jointly hosted by:
Department of Political Science

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Repository.ust.hk/ir/Record/1783.1-14334

Conference on ‘Foreign-Domestic Linkages in China’s International Behaviours,’
Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives, University of Victoria, BC, April 24-25, 2008

ABSTRACT: Since the late 19th century many Chinese leaders have studied abroad, mostly in Japan, the US or the former Soviet Union. Recently, thousands are returning from studying overseas. Is this new cohort of returnees more internationalist than Chinese who do not study abroad? If their values differ and they join China’s elite, they could influence China’s foreign policy. Drawing on surveys of returnees from Japan and Canada over the past 15 years, we compare their views on “co-operative internationalism” and “assertive nationalism” with the attitudes of China’s middle class drawn from a nationwide survey in 2006. Our returnees are both more “internationalist” than the middle class and less nationalistic. So they are likely to support China’s increasing international role and perhaps constrain China’s growing nationalist sentiment.

Links:
Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and African Studies
Repository.ust.hk/ir/Record/1783.1-14458

Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada, December 2008
Zweig, David Stephen

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: International student exchanges and overseas education can play an important role in building bridges between countries. By living and studying abroad, citizens of one country can learn to understand another culture and develop favourable views of their host country and its people. If they return home, they may rely on ties established during their time overseas to make a living; increased trade may result.2 If they are academics or researchers, scholarly exchanges may follow their paths. And even if they stay in their host country, they may engage their home country in some meaningful manner, strengthening ties between their home and host country.

This report looks at how mainland Chinese who went to Canada to study facilitate exchanges between China and Canada. It does not study mainlanders who migrated to Canada and then subsequently, for whatever reason, returned to China, but only those who went abroad to study.3 We wish to assess how these returnees feel about Canada in general and about their educational and work experience in Canada in specific. Do academic flows into Canada and the subsequent “reverse brain drain” back to China enhance Canada’s “soft power?” Positive feelings could translate into more frequent interactions, while negative feelings could lead to fewer interactions. What factors explain the positive or negative view? Do they recommend others to go to Canada and if so, why?

Second, how extensive are interactions between returnees and Canada? What are the characteristics of the returnees who interact more with Canada and why? What are the patterns of exchanges? What resources are transferred? Do those who do not return also serve as bridges across the Pacific?

Third, how important is the Canadian experience to a returnee’s life? How much do students benefit from this experience? If the perception in China is that a Canadian degree is not helpful, students will hesitate to come and Canada will have difficulty commercializing its academic institutions. To attract more Chinese students, Canada must prepare them for careers in China, as much as in Canada, because in 2007, over 40,000 mainland students worldwide returned to China in search of a job. So, we ask: does overseas study enhance a Chinese youths’ job opportunities after they return, or do returnees from Canada confront a more serious unemployment problem than returnees from other countries?

Where possible we present our findings from a comparative perspective. In 2007, we completed a similar study of returnees from Japan that drew on a list of 7,000 returnees from Japan which was collected in a similar manner as the Canadian data, making the two data sets somewhat comparable.

Links:
Asia Pacific Research of Canada – Download/view full PDF
Repository.ust.hk/ir/Record/1783.1-49837

Conference on Foreign and Security Policy Issues in Asia, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Hong Kong, China, 18 March 2013
Zweig, David Stephen SOSC

INTRODUCTION: During the two years I spent as an exchange student in the People’s Republic of China, from October 1974 to July 1976, under the auspices of the Sino-Canadian Student Exchange Programme, I was witness to such major political events as the convening of the Fourth National People’s Congress, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat Campaign and the Campaign to Criticize Water Margin. This report focuses on the events that occurred in the last 10 months of my stay, and most particularly on the Educational Debate of late 1975, the passing of Chou En-lai, the campaign against Teng Hsiao-p’ing, and the events surrounding the T’ien An Men Incident. My sources include personal observations: in the first few months of 1976 I witnessed the uneven unfolding of the “Educational Debate,” and I was in T’ien An Men Square on 3 and 4 April, when the first open attacks against the “Shanghai four” took place, on the eve of the riot of 5 April; material I collected from posters at Peita and in Shanghai; conversations with other foreign and Chinese students; and various contacts with Chinese teachers and officials. I also had contact with some members of the foreign community.

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Repository.ust.hk/ir/Record/1783.1-85936