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This week on Sinica, I chat with David Zweig, a veteran China scholar who is Professor Emeritus from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. We discuss Davis’d latest book, The War for Chinese Talent in America, which looks at Chinese efforts to harness the intellectual firepower of Chinese scientists and engineers who studied abroad, especially in the United States, and bring them — or at least their knowledge —back to China. David’s book takes a balanced look at both the very real problems generated by Chinese policies as well as the overreaction by the U.S. Department of Justice in the form of the infamous China Initiative.

3:40 – Why got David interested on this particular topic

7:07 – The diaspora option

12:09 – The Thousand Talents Program/Plan

18:28 – How the talent programs operate

23:48 – Motivations for Chinese to participate in the talent programs, how geopolitics now impacts these decisions, and what the effect of the China Initiative has been on collaboration

36:29 – The China Initiative’s climate of fear and the concern for racial profiling

49:40 – The extent of the validity of U.S. security concerns

57:24 – David’s suggestions for balancing national security interests and open scientific exchange

Paying It Forward: Dan Lynch and his book, China’s Futures: PRC Elites Debate Economics, Politics, and Foreign Policy

Recommendations:

David: It’s a Wonderful World — The Louis Armstrong Musical in New York

Kaiser: The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection by Tamim Ansary, especially the audiobook read by the author

Links:

Published online by Journal of Contemporary China

Read the full article as a PDF

Links:

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Read the full article as a PDF

David Zweig

ABSTRACT: A laudable component of Sino–US rapprochement after 1978 has been collaborative research. But China’s aggressive effort to benefit from its scientific diaspora, the cutting-edge technology that has
gravitated to China from the United States, and America’s new perception of China as a “strategic
competitor,” led the Trump administration to roll out the “China Initiative,” securitizing scientific collaboration. Despite a strong pushback from universities and Asian–American rights groups, this scientific cooperation remains at risk.

Scientific exchanges enhance humankind. Thus, a major component of Sino–US rapprochement after 1978 was academic and scholarly exchanges, eventually leading to collaborative research. Such efforts have been lauded. In 2014, the president of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Francis Collins, speaking at Fudan University in Shanghai, said that “science has no borders because knowledge belongs to all humankind,” while an internal NIH review found that between 2010 and 2019, joint projects funded by NIH and the Chinese had produced several high-impact papers on cancer.

So, What Went Wrong?
Changes in Chinese policy, the high level of cutting-edge technology that has gravitated to China, and shifts in the United States’ perceptions of its national security, ended this cozy relationship. To benefit from its overseas talent, Chinese institutions, such as the ministry of education (MOE), the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), established programs to bring back the country’s best and brightest. However, as the very best scientists in the Chinese diaspora chose to stay abroad, both the MOE and the CCP offered part-time affiliations with Chinese universities, whereby these researchers maintained their jobs overseas and continued their research in Western laboratories. They also trained tens of thousands of Mainland PhD candidates and postdoctoral fellows who worked with them in their laboratories.

But around 2013, the CCP stopped publishing the names of part-time participants in its Thousand Talents Plan (TTP), taking the program underground. In 2018, the Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy labelled China a “strategic competitor” seeking global preeminence. Replacing inter-state strategic competition with terrorism as the primary concern of US national security securitized scientific collaboration. […]

Links:

Boston College Center for International Higher Education

Read the full article as a PDF

David Zweig, Kellee S. Tsai, Alwyn Didar Singh

ABSTRACT: China and India have significant overseas populations that constitute global talent, and both countries recognize that reverse migration of diasporic talent can contribute to domestic economic development. This study compares China and India’s capacity to encourage return migration with a focus on overseas entrepreneurs who return to start new firms in their homeland. In addition to reviewing state policies and prior related research, we analyze returnees’ views towards the state using two original data sets: a China survey of 100 returned and 100 local entrepreneurs from Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou conducted in 2004 through a face-to-face format; and an India survey administered in 2016–17, comprising 150 returned entrepreneurs and senior managers, and 75 local entrepreneurs in the Indian cities of Pune, Bangalore and New Delhi. Given that India and China began their reforms approximately 13 years apart, comparing these two surveys provides a more developmentally appropriate comparison than purely synchronic surveys. We find that that returned Chinese entrepreneurs have a more positive view of the state and are more willing to work with the local state than their Indian counterparts. Futhermore, returnee entrepreneurs in India are less tolerant of rent-seeking behaviour by local bureaucrats than those in China, and view the local state as being more of an impediment than a source of support. Overall, a significant gap remains between China and India in terms of policies, returnee perceptions, and on-the-ground experiences of returned entrepreneurs.

Links:
Science Direct: World Development Volume 138, February 21, 105192
Download PDF directly

The China Quarterly, v. 73, 1978, p. 140-158
Zweig, David Stephen

ABSTRACT: 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.

Links:
The China Quarterly, v. 73, 1978, p. 140-158
Repository.ust.hk/ir/Record/1783.1-31106

Stanford Journal of International Law, v. 23, 1987, p. 319-364
Zweig, David Stephen; Hartford, Kathleen; Feinerman, James; Deng, Jianxu

SUBJECTS: Dispute resolution (Law) — Analysis
Law reform — Economic aspects
Contracts — Laws, regulations and rules
China — Laws, regulations and rules

Links:
Stanford Journal of International Law, v. 23, 1987, p. 319-364
Repository.ust.hk/ir/Record/1783.1-31372

International Regional Science Review, v. 11, 1987, p. 43-58
Zweig, David

ABSTRACT: This paper documents the increased urban-rural interaction in China and argues that the new developmental strategy apparently has helped narrow the urban-rural gap. Income differentials between peasants and workers have declined. Direct commercial interaction between peasants and rural factories and urban residents and urban factories have increased dramatically, and peasants have begun to play a significant role in developing the previously moribund urban service sector. Since 1984, rural surplus labor, previously hidden by the over employment of the rural collective sector, has begun to stream into China’s urban centers, particularly the new small towns springing up in the countryside. At the same time, peasants are precipitating an increase in China’s medium-size cities as well. Moreover, the creation of a vigorous rural economy, with its increased demand for consumer and producer goods and the closer integration of the urban and rural sectors, has generated strong pressures for the liberalization and decentralization of the urban economy.

Links:
International Regional Science Review, v. 11, 1987, p. 43-58
Repository.ust.hk/ir/Record/1783.1-31353