China pours big 💸 into STEM education & talent — but has it paid off, and how does China compare to the US?

In a new @CSIS report (my 1st!), I review new 🇨🇳 and 🇺🇸 data and argue the US will need STEM immigration reform to stay ahead.

a 🧵: [1/15]
csis.org/analysis/winni… 2/ Talent competition is sometimes overlooked in the US. Not in China. Recent high-level Xi speech:

"At the end of the day, the country’s overall competitiveness is the competitiveness of its skilled personnel … National rejuvenation depends on talent"

scmp.com/news/china/pol…

.@jacob_feldgoise & I have a new deep dive into 📊 on Chinese STEM students in the US: cset.georgetown.edu/research/estim…

Sadly, despite how prominent debates about Chinese students are today, there’s little good data on even basic questions — and lots of misperceptions.

* thread * [1/x] We asked two basic questions:

(1) How many Chinese STEM students are there across degree levels and fields (e.g. how many in CS master's programs)?

(2) What % of total US students in STEM programs are Chinese, across these degree levels and fields? [2/x]

Amid a big policy push for US semiconductor leadership, we have a new paper on how to strengthen America’s talent advantage in the sector: cset.georgetown.edu/research/the-c…

It includes 7 figures and 8 tables with 📊 on the semi workforce, from 6 sources.

Here are the highlights: [1/x] First, current US immigration policies are directly at odds with the push to strengthen semiconductor supply chains. You can’t expect firms to move R&D and high-end production to the US while slashing their access to talent, as we argued in WSJ: [2/x]
on.wsj.com/2HtGWd0

Drawing on forthcoming research, (twitterless) Will Hunt and I argue in @WSJ that two popular policy goals — (1) supply chain security for computer chips, and (2) immigration restrictions — are almost certainly incompatible.

Here's why. [1/x]

wsj.com/articles/ameri… First, why care about chip supply chains? One, DOD worries adversaries could sabotage chips used in US infrastructure and weapons systems — if chips were manufactured here, there'd be more security. It could also create much-needed jobs. [2/x]

on.wsj.com/2B9z25f

Sen. Cotton says “it’s a scandal to me that we have trained so many of the Chinese Communist Party’s brightest minds to go back to China … .” He’s far from alone in thinking so.

But are Chinese students actually going back to China in large numbers? *a📊data📊thread* [1/x]

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1254428558224736257

First, let’s talk CCP intentions. There can be little debate about it wanting more returnees. But the CCP does not have absolute control. Its officials have long complained that “the number of top talents lost in China ranks first in the world.” [2/x]

https://twitter.com/shadihamid/status/1254770822654246915

I’m very excited that, after more than half a year of work, we just published our new report: “Keeping Top AI Talent in the United States”

It asks (1) how many int'l AI grad students stay in the US?, and (2) how can the US increase that number?

Here’s what we found. [1/x] First, we found these questions are actually pretty hard to answer. We did ~9 months of data collection, gathering 2,000 comprehensive career histories of recent US AI PhD grads (& more in the pipeline). We also analyzed four other sources w/ relevant data.