Abstract

This article mainly focus on the increasingly exacerbated “Brain Drain” in China. The article analyzes what will be the pivotal factors that affect international students and scholars about making decision of whether return to China or not, especially in the circumstance that international economy has been playing the most crucial role across the world. Based on the comparison of several main factors, the article argues that since the development of economic condition has become the most important index to assess countries, and global-scale economy has been worldwide spread, for this generation(those who were born in latter 1980s) in China. They have more opportunities running businesses or gaining high wages than ever. Compare to the other factors, the economic factor is the mainly driving factor influences international students and scholars about retuning to China or not.

Global Economy: Today’s Most Important Factor In China’s “Brain Drain”

There are two revolutionary “Brain Drain” in China based on the contemporary economy-oriented phenomena. The first section will state the various analysis of former researchers, and with comparison and contracting, sums up with several main factors that affect international students and scholars to make the decision about returning to China or not. The second section will elaborate the two main factors based on the global economic circumstance, and then ends up with conclusion about what the two new forms of “Brain Drain” is that play the most efficient role in recent generation of China. By realizing the fact that “Brain Drain” in China become more and more serious, researchers have been doing numerous investigation and researches about the factors determine the decisions of international students and scholars about returning to China or not. According to He Li, There are three waves of returned students in modern Chinese history: The Chinese study abroad movement was born in 1872 when the Qing government decided to send students to the United States. Between 1846 and 1949 about 150,000 Chinese students studied abroad; the second wave started in the early 1950s soon after the People’s Republish was established; the third wave of study abroad began with the market-oriented reforms in the late 1970s(He Li 8-11).

As Chinese leader Den Xiao ping’s plan, the benefit of sending students and scholars from the PRC overseas for further education is visual (Zweig and Rosen 1), and it is even more obvious that “Brain Drain” has become a serious problem for China. According to Zweig’s research, “over 50,000 Chinese students and scholars became permanent residents of United States; over 10,000 secured working rights in Canada; and in Australia, over 20,000 Chinese students were accorded and opportunity to stay, although the longevity of that commitment is in some doubt”(Zweig 1). Supported by Chinese booming economy and further liberalization of politics toward overseas students and scholars, the denominator of the amount of students and scholars go abroad is increasingly high(Table1, Table2). “The number of US Visa issued to Chinese students to study at US universities has increased by 30 per cent over last year, from more than 98,000 in 2009 to nearly 128,000 in October 2010, placing China as the top country of origin for international students”(Marklein 13). According to the Chinese Statistical Yearbook, “between 1985 and 1999 nearly 2/3 of all graduate students who had gone abroad had yet to return”. Although the percentage of the students who had returned was high, with the increase of the of the amount of international students and scholars, assuming the rate of students who will not return is steady, the population will be remarkably increasing. Since the recognition of the disservices for the of “Brain Drain” of Chinese international students and scholars, numerous researchers analyzed bunches of factors that influence international students and scholars on determining whether return or not. However, it should be noticed that there was rare research about the relation between transformation of global economy and the factors affect international students and scholars about returning China. Since International economic issues became the core theme of the world, the central factor has changed from politics to economic issue(Zweig 24). Although the driving factor has changed, political condition is still the significant factor determines international students’ decisions on returning or no historically. Chinese political condition and democratic transformation have been a pop theme since the Tian’an men event. “Immediately after June 4th, 1989, most studies cited political anger and hostility towards the Chinese government as the key factor for not returning”(David Zweig 22). By issuing several pertinent regulations, Chinese government has already changed the “misunderstanding”, which used to be “the desire of political freedom, fears of political instability, lack of trust in the government, and the political campaigns of the past 40 years”(Zweig 22). However, some new problems relate to politics has emerged. The major problems are the imperfection of Chinese education system and the poor condition of Chinese academic field. According to Cai Hong and Qi Yue, the three major problem in Chinese education system are given below: The first problem is caused by the concept of “education commercialization” raised by some of the regime’s leaders. The second major problem in education is that inequity in education worsens general social inequity. The third problem in education is that the content and methods of education have become rigid and staid.(Cai Hong, Qi Yue, Significant Problems in China’s Existing education system, The Epoch Times, Jun 06, 2006 ) Compare to the Western education system, Chinese education system can be described as so-called “cramming” education and score-oriented education. The fact is that those students who have no opportunity to go abroad for education are forced to take the similar courses no matter what they are interested in. Although the Education institutions consider grades as a main element to evaluate students’ performance in campus, Chinese education organizations prefer to view scoring as the only method to assess students’ performance. Based on the comparison of the Western education and Chinese education, it is rational that students who went abroad for further education will prefer to take the advanced education for personal improvement. The second remarkable problem is the corruption in Chinese academic field. In persent Chinese academia, The equality and creation of academic research have not been valued sufficiently(Jin-Hua 3). It will make the international students and scholars who are going to engage in academic research think twice about returning to China. The rencent problems link to politics come with the global transformation on political ideology. Though the root-cause is still the problems in Chinese national policies, the manifestation of politics that affect international students and scholars have become more diverse and individualism. In addition to the politic factors, economic condition is another main factor influences international students’ decision about returning to China or not. We can clearly see from the Table 3 that the CPI of China in 2003 in higher than that in USA. Which means the living cost in China is higher than that in USA generally. Furthermore, because of the increased number of graduate student enrollment, as well as the international graduate students enrollment, the job market in China will be more competitive. Once the supply surpass the demand, the price(salary) of the products(human resource) will slump. Compares to China, the international students and scholars are more likely to get higher wages from the Western corporations. According to recent survey, the quantity of self-funded international students is becoming larger and larger. It’s reasonable to imply that those self-funded international students will be running their own businesses after graduating. The condition of business environment will be taken into account. The next section will mainly focus on the economic factors influence international students’ decision about returning under the scale of globe. Because the factors influence peoples’ decisions become more individualistic, the personal factors affect international students’s decision about returning or not should be concerned about. In David Zweig’s research, “women were less likely to want to return than men. In addition, in their logistic regression analysis, sex is a very significant factor for people with children. Single women are more likely to stay than married ones”(10-11). The problem in equality of males and females in China has remained, though Chinese government has been making efforts to exclude the discrimination of females. Because of the drastic compete of the job opportunities in China, women who have average degree have relatively lower chances to get content jobs. What makes the condition worse is that Chinese historical discrimination of females assume that women who have higher degrees are less charming and out of the Chinese concept of females. Whereby marriage, job opportunities, and further education become the three factors influence women’s decision about returning. While males’ considerations are more simple than females’. They prefer to get themselves promoted and provide with more job opportunities. Another personal factor is parents. China is a Confucian society, so parents’ views play a effective role in students’ decision about retuning.

Analysis: The Impact of Global Economy on China’s “Brain Drain” This section will analyze two “revolutionary” “Brain Drain” in China, based on the economy globalization. The first one can be described as multinationals’ attraction. The phenomena is that more international students decide to return to China after they graduate from the Western universities than before(Table 2), while high percentage of them prefer to work for a multinational owned by companies from other countries. In other words, they return to China physically and still serve the Western economy just as same as they stay in the Western countries. It’s rational of them to make the choice. First of all, multinationals are arranged in the Western way. Since international students have already got used to the Western way of working, they are more able to adjust to the “new” corporations. Otherwise they will have risk in readjusting to the domestic working environment. Secondly, multinationals are more likely to give appropriate room for those employees who have experience of studying abroad to improve themselves, as well as the salaries. In addition to the multinationals’ attraction, another transformation of “Brain Drain” in China is the “mis-educated” work force. Majority of international students and scholars will choose their specialities based on the prediction of the popular industries in the future. Since the concept of economy has changed from domestic economy to global-scale economy, international students will force themselves to choose the specialities unconsciously based on the global pop industries, or somehow the Western pop industries. The consequence is that the international students will be qualified with certain knowledge, and return to China. Eventually they find out that the popular industries under global economic framework are not equal to Chinese popular industries and they can’t even find any jobs link to certain fields. However, other ones in China seemed to be “cold industries” still lack of qualified employees. This kind of “Brain Drain” can’t be simply understood as the influx of intellectuals from China to the Western countries, but the loss of intellectuals from China to Nowhere. Compare to traditional “Brain Drain”, the problems for Chinese government is becoming more and more complicated. Multinationals’ attraction and “Mis-educated” work force are the two new forms of “Brain Drain” in China currently, which were not specifically investigated before. Under the circumstance of globalization, especially economic globalization, these two revolutionary “Brain Drain” are playing significant roles in affecting international students’ decision on returning to China or not. For Chinese government, the influx of international students and scholars who decide to stay abroad permanently, obviously, is a serious problem. Therefore, the solution government impose to deal with the problem should be transform to a new phase-the framework of global economy.

Table 1
Chinese National Bureau of Statistics “Statistical Yearbook of China” Beijing: China Statistics Press, various years
|Year |Chinese Students（Rank in|percentage of all the |Chinese scholars |Percentage of foreign scholars in USA（%） |
| |the number of |international students in | | |
| |international students in|USA（%） | | |
| |USA） | | | |
|1990/91 |39600 (1) |9.7 |n.a. |n.a. |
|1991/92 |42910 (1) |10.2 |n.a. |n.a. |
|1992/93 |45130 (1) |10.3 |n.a. |n.a. |
|1993/94 |44380 (1) |9.9 |11156 |18.6 |
|1994/95 |39403 (2) |8.7 |9866 |17.0 |
|1995/96 |39613 (2) |8.7 |9228 |15.5 |
|1996/97 |42503 (2) |7.8 |9724 |15.6 |
|1997/98 |46958 (2) |9.8 |10709 |16.4 |
|1998/99 |51001 (1) |10.4 |11854 |16.8 |
|1999/00 |54466 (1) |10.6 |13229 |17.7 |
|2000/01 |59939 (1) |10.9 |14772 |18.5 |
|2001/02 |63211 (2) |10.8 |15624 |18.2 |
|2002/03 |64757 (2) |11.0 |15171 |18.0 |
|2003/04 |61765 (2) |10.8 |14923 |18.0 |
|2004/05 |62523 (2) |11.1 |17035 |19.0 |
|2005/06 |62582 (2) |11.1 |19017 |19.6 |
|2006/07 |67723 (2) |11.6 |20149 |20.5 |

Table 2
Open Doors: Report on International Education Exchange (New York: Institute of International Education, various years)
|Year |The number of Chinese international |The number of returned international |Rate of return（%） |
| |students |students | |
|1978 |860 |248 |28.84 |
|1979 |1777 |231 |18.16 |
|1980 |2124 |162 |13.46 |
|1981 |2922 |1143 |23.22 |
|1982 |2326 |2116 |38.96 |
|1983 |2633 |2303 |49.07 |
|1984 |3073 |2290 |54.04 |
|1985 |4888 |1424 |48.13 |
|1986 |4676 |1388 |44.72 |
|1987 |4703 |1605 |43.06 |
|1988 |3786 |3000 |47.12 |
|1989 |3329 |1753 |47.61 |
|1990 |2950 |1593 |48.08 |
|1991 |2900 |2069 |49.65 |
|1992 |6540 |3611 |50.39 |
|1993 |10742 |5128 |49.92 |
|1994 |19071 |4230 |43.25 |
|1995 |20381 |5750 |40.17 |
|1996 |20905 |6570 |38.66 |
|1997 |22410 |7130 |37.58 |
|1998 |17622 |7379 |38.05 |
|1999 |23749 |7748 |37.36 |
|2000 |38989 |9121 |34.92 |
|2001 |83973 |12243 |29.36 |
|2002 |125179 |17945 |25.01 |
|2003 |117307 |20152 |23.34 |
|2004 |114682 |24726 |23.03 |
|2005 |118515 |34987 |24.02 |
|2006 |134000 |42000 |25.09 |

Table 3
CPI and WPI for US and China, 1994-2003(Source:IFS:IMF; Chinese ex-factory price data are obtained from Chinese Statistical Yearbook, 2004)
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References
David Zweig, To Return or Not Return?: Politics Vs. Economics in China’s Brain Drain 1998, 15 December 1996,
International student Mobility: Patterns and Trends, World Education News and Reviews, 2007
He Li, Returned Students and Political Change in China, Asian Perspective Vol.30,No. 2,2006,pp.5-29
Chinese Statistical Yearbook,2000
Ronald Mckinnon, Exchange Rate or Wage Changes In International Adjustment? Japan and China Versus The United States, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, 2005
Mary, Beth, Marklein, Chinese College Students Flocking to U.S Campuses, USA TODAY December 8, 2009
Huang Jin-Hua, On Academic Corruption in Higher Education Research Administration, Guilin Teachers’ college, GuiLin Guangxi 541001