The “Return to China” trend among Chinese-American scientists is accelerating, with data showing that the proportion of Chinese scientists based in the United States returning to China has risen from 48% in 2010 to 67% in 2021. Analysts believe that this phenomenon may partly stem from their involvement in the Chinese Communist Party’s “Thousand Talents Plan,” or it could be due to China’s efforts to attract these talents back through incentives such as high salaries, possibly involving united front considerations.
On January 21, Tsinghua University’s WeChat account published an article introducing computer scientist and blockchain expert Chen Jing, who left the United States to join Tsinghua University as a full-time professor. The official Tsinghua University Weibo account also released a video introducing Chen Jing’s background on the same day.
According to data from the Chinese Computer Society Digital Library, Chen Jing is a recipient of the Chinese government’s “National High-Level Overseas Talent Program,” with research interests in blockchain, smart contracts, computational game theory, and mechanism design. She previously served as Chief Scientist and Head of Theoretical Research at the well-known blockchain technology company Algorand, and was an assistant professor in the Computer Science department at Stony Brook University. Chen Jing has published numerous papers in top conferences and journals in computer theory and economics, and has served on program committees for important international conferences in computational theory, computational game theory, security, and blockchain.
Chen Jing graduated from Tsinghua University in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and technology, and obtained a master’s degree in engineering in 2007. In 2012, she completed her doctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In recent years, there has been a growing number of top scientists in the United States choosing to return to China for employment, leading to a wave of world-class scientists joining Chinese universities and research institutions. This trend includes not only Chinese-born scholars but also academic experts from overseas.
At the beginning of this year, the academic background of Tsinghua University’s Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Zhao Huichan, attracted widespread attention on social media. She graduated from Tsinghua University as an undergraduate and went on to pursue a doctoral degree at Cornell University in the United States, followed by one year of postdoctoral research at Harvard University. At the age of 29, she returned to Tsinghua University to teach.
In late December 2024, it was noted that Wang Cunyu, a member of the American Academy of Medical Sciences and a renowned Chinese biologist, had left the University of California, Los Angeles, to become the dean of the Clinical Medicine Institute at Peking University.
In early 2024, international mechanics expert Gao Huajian joined Tsinghua University as a chair professor. In November of the same year, climate downscaling model expert Chen Deliang joined Tsinghua as a full-time professor. Dong Yanhao, who had developed high-performance ceramic materials, returned to Tsinghua after ten years in the US to become an assistant professor at the School of Materials Science; and Xu Ming resigned from a tenured professorship overseas to become the deputy dean of the School of Environment at Tsinghua University.
In January 2024, Sun Song, a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, joined the Institute of Mathematics at Zhejiang University as the youngest permanent member of the institute.
A study released by Princeton University in 2023 showed that the number of Chinese-American scientists leaving the United States had steadily increased from 900 in 2010 to 2621 in 2021. In 2010, 48% of these scientists chose to relocate to mainland China and Hong Kong, while 52% moved to other countries. By 2021, the proportion relocating to China had risen to 67%.
Some analysts believe that the reason prominent Chinese-American scientists choose to go to China is because the Chinese Communist Party fully supports their research endeavors.
Data shows that China’s investment in research funding has significantly increased. According to the 2023 statistical bulletin, the total R&D investment nationwide exceeded 3.3 trillion yuan (approximately $468.3 billion USD), a year-on-year increase of 8.4%. Among these, the research funding executed mainly by universities saw an increase of 14.1%, becoming one of the fastest-growing areas.
Former Chinese human rights lawyer Wu Shaoping, now living in mainland China, expressed in an interview with a reporter from Epoch Times on January 31 that many Chinese-American scientists choosing to return to China may be part of the Chinese Communist Party’s “Thousand Talents Plan.”
The “Thousand Talents Plan” is a shorthand term for China’s “National High-Level Overseas Talent Plan,” which was initiated in 2008. It aims to attract high-level overseas talents focusing on China’s development strategic goals.
Wu suggested that these scientists may have long been on the Chinese government’s list, with many of them given specific “missions,” such as penetrating and obtaining the technological and intelligence needs required by China in Western countries. As the United States increasingly focuses on national security issues, these individuals are perceiving rising risks and thus are eager to leave the United States.
He also remarked that another possibility is that the Chinese government is enticing these talents back through incentives such as high salaries, potentially involving united front factors. Once these scientists return to China, they can bring back the technologies and research achievements they acquired in Europe and America, prompting the Chinese government to willingly invest substantial resources to absorb them.
Wu further stated that China relies on a nationwide system to propel technological development but fundamentally depends on massive investment. The allocation and utilization of funds are more influenced by power operations rather than being guided by a core focus on technological innovation and academic research. Within this system, China faces challenges in truly establishing a scientific foundation that leads global technological advancement. He believes that far-sighted scientists can discern which institutional environment is more conducive to the development of technological innovation and academic research.
Former Beijing lawyer and Chair of the Alliance for a Democratic China in Canada, Lai Jianping, also told Epoch Times reporters that the Chinese Communist Party had long established an extensive network abroad, placing numerous spies in the technology and academic fields. In recent years, the United States and other Western countries have increased efforts to crackdown on Chinese spies in high-tech sectors, leading to the arrests of many individuals, making their overseas situations increasingly risky. Consequently, the Chinese Communist Party is recalling them. Meanwhile, given China’s current domestic and international challenges, the Party is mired in multiple crises and seeks to inject confidence into its regime through technological development. It adopts a nationwide system to extensively recruit overseas technology elites, intending to bolster its rule with their technical capabilities.
Harvard University’s Chemistry Department Chair, Charles Lieber, was arrested by the FBI on January 28, 2020, and the U.S. Department of Justice accused him of participating in the Chinese “Thousand Talents Plan,” secretly receiving $50,000 in monthly salary, $158,000 in personal remuneration, and $1.74 million in expenses, collaborating to establish a joint laboratory with Wuhan University of Science and Technology, and lying to the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conceal this venture.
Since the initiation of the “China Initiative” by the United States in 2018 to counter the Chinese Communist Party, the case of Harvard professor Lieber is one of the most prominent examples. Two other cases involving Chinese female researchers have also garnered attention.
One of them is Zaosong Cheng, who worked in cancer cell research at a medical center in Boston. On December 10, 2019, she was arrested at Logan International Airport in Boston as she attempted to carry 19 stolen bottles of research samples back to China.
The other was Yanqing Ye, a lieutenant in the People’s Liberation Army and a 29-year-old woman, against whom the Massachusetts District Court issued a federal arrest warrant on January 28, 2020, with the FBI issuing a wanted poster.
In September 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a series of bills related to the Chinese Communist Party, focusing on U.S.-China competition in the technology sector. These bills aim to ban Chinese-made drones, restrict the U.S. market access of companies in bio-technology related to China, and cut off China’s remote access rights to U.S. computer chips.
Other measures include curbing Beijing’s influence on U.S. university campuses and restarting the “China Initiative” from the first term of the Trump administration.
In November 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice launched the “China Initiative” to combat Chinese espionage activities in research and industrial sectors in the United States, particularly targeting intellectual property theft in academic circles. Many cases under this initiative involved researchers failing to disclose Chinese funding support in grant applications, with numerous cases involving university professors, sparking widespread controversy. On February 23, 2022, the Department of Justice announced the termination of the initiative.
Under pressure from the Department of Justice’s “China Initiative” and investigations by other federal agencies, U.S. universities began distancing themselves from implicated Chinese professors and pressuring them to voluntarily resign or retire early.
In an article published by the University of Michigan in March 2024, it was noted that a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chen, was arrested in 2021 for concealing his relationship with the Chinese government, one of the professors indicted under the “China Initiative.” With the support of MIT, including covering Chen’s legal fees, the case was dismissed a year later. However, the article indicated that Chen’s case was an individual situation; many Chinese professors facing similar accusations were often abandoned by their universities, given an ultimatum to resign or retire early.
The article also detailed that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the largest funder of biomedical research in U.S. academia. Under the framework of the “China Initiative,” the NIH began investigating whether its faculty members were appropriately using federal funds, specifically if the funds were being used for related work in China. Due to this investigation, 44% of 255 professors lost their jobs. It was reported that most affected individuals were tenured professors.
Concerned about losing funding, universities typically reached out to the implicated professors, advising them to voluntarily resign or retire early. In most cases, these professors would avoid discussing their cases publicly to protect themselves and their universities, eventually quietly leaving their positions.