Brain drain from USA to China

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

There is a figure that better understands the meaning of the current trade war between the United States and China. This figure is 42.8%.

Of all patent applications filed in the world in 2017, according to the International Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Switzerland, exactly 42.8% are registered in China. In the USA - only 19.4%. In Japan and South Korea - 10.2% each. Remains Europe - this is 5.1%, and "the rest of the world" - 15.8%.

Of course, not every patent is a grandiose innovation that can turn the world around; it could just be a new model of a lighter. And not every Chinese patent belongs to a resident of the country - it can also be a foreigner. But exactly the same reservations can and should be made in relation to patents registered, for example, in the United States.

This indicator says that global intelligence is leaking from the United States (the former leader in this area) to China. Moreover, the trend of an innovative shift towards China and other Asia has been traced for a long time, already ten to fifteen years, and, moreover, with an acceleration: in 2017 alone, we observe an increase in the share of Chinese patent applications by 4.8%.

The term "brain drain", recall, was born in the previous era, when young people from not fully developed countries went to study in the West and did not return, staying to work on the innovative potential of, for example, the United States. Because they paid more and, in addition, researched interesting problems, a couple of technological levels higher than at home.

As a result, sometime in the 1980s, a global concept was born: the West is a group of states where innovation, design and other intelligence are concentrated, and the rest of the countries, including China, are workshops where they work by hand, often in dirty industries. The world should be like this and should continue to be like this, but the world gradually changed and became different.

Let's see what is happening today in this area between China and the United States. The Chinese and Indians are still leading the way in applications for H1B entry visas, with which American high-tech sucked the brains out of the rest of the world. But after some time, the Chinese, having received visas, gaining experience and knowledge, return home, and this return flow is only growing.

Since 2012, 2.5 million overseas Chinese students have returned to the country. In 2016, there were 432 thousand returnees, which is 58% more than in 2012.

Naturally, such things do not happen by themselves. There is the Thousand Talents program launched by Beijing in 2008 (by the way, not one thousand, but seven have already passed through it). These are the best of the best, who are given a research grant equal to $ 317 thousand, an amount for personal expenses (four times less than the grant, but almost 80 thousand is not bad at all), and also pay for medicine and housing. And there are many other similar programs, central and local, that make return profitable.

Now, a few conclusions leaked to the media from the recently concluded Boao Forum (the Chinese analogue of our St. Petersburg Economic Forum). The main topic was, of course, the trade war declared by America on China, in which the main blow is inflicted precisely on the innovative Chinese products. According to Donald Trump's speeches and tweets, the essence of the problem is that the Chinese are stealing technology from Americans, which is under investigation in the United States. But without waiting for their result, Trump imposes sanctions (that is, customs tariffs) on the import of innovative products from China.

It will, of course, be very difficult to prove that China somehow violates the norms of international trade, but who cares about the evidence today.

Regarding the theft, it is worth noting that at the same forum, new measures for state protection of intellectual property in China were announced, including the creation of a new supervisory agency.

… There was an era when it was fashionable to think that the Chinese only know how to borrow and copy. Trump's tweets are for those who stayed in that era. Now the essence of the US problem is that it is necessary to stop the situation in which the Americans will have to steal technologies from China by any, the most insane actions. So Trump's trade war is about the same as his Syrian madness: there is no time for evidence and international law, something must be done to prevent the strengthening of forces in the world that are not subject to the United States and have a lot of opportunities for this.

And one more thing: during the recent presidential elections in Russia, one of the failed candidates published a thesis on foreign policy. These theses, among others, contain the idea: Russia cannot get away from the West, because the main source of innovation is the United States, Europe and others.

So: this was written by a person who remained in a past era. And in terms of the innovative potential of the powers - already almost the year before.