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China’s return incentive scheme lures young scientists – superstars not so much

  • Young Thousand Talents programme lures Western-trained scientists with cash, lab support
  • But top researchers prefer less ‘administrative intervention’ in the West, study says

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China’s Young Thousand Talents programme has successfully lured back Western-trained scientists with cash and big research grants. Photo: Shutterstock
Holly Chik

A long-term Chinese incentive programme was successful at enticing high-calibre, overseas-trained scientists to return home, but was less accomplished at luring back top researchers, according to a new study.

It was one of the findings by a team of researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tsinghua University and the University of Hong Kong, who evaluated the impact and policy implications of the “generously funded” Young Thousand Talents (YTT) programme. The scheme was established in 2010 to recruit and nurture early-career expatriate scientists who return to China after receiving PhDs abroad.

Scientists aged 40 and under were induced by YTT to return home if they were offered better funding and larger research teams to support their work, according to the study.

“While ‘the best are yet to come’, China’s YTT programme was attractive to young expatriates who had the capability but not the funding to run their own labs for independent research,” the researchers said in an article published Friday in the peer-reviewed journal Science.

But the best scientists were less likely to return, they found. “With the option to pursue independent research either in the US or in China, top-calibre expatriates remain unlikely to return even given the YTT offers, probably reflecting a social and cultural environment conducive to scientific inquiry in the US.”

The researchers published their findings based on an analysis of the publications and research grants of 721 awardees in the first four cohorts from 2011 to 2013.

Among them are 339 returnees who received PhDs abroad, accepted the offers and spent at least five years conducting research in China, while 73 scientists rejected YTT offers to remain overseas.

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