Opinion | How America can exploit China’s brain drain

Whatever the specific motivations, the number of people leaving China and seeking to make (or invest) their fortunes abroad is rising again, according to data from the U.N. Population Division and recently highlighted by the Wall Street Journal’s Nathaniel Taplin.

Every year over the past several decades, China has experienced a net migration outflow. The years after the global financial crisis, however, saw a slightly slower trickle of people leaving, perhaps because the United States and other richer countries faced a weak recovery.

But in recent years (with a brief exception during covid-era lockdowns), that trickle has again come to resemble more of a gusher. On net, more than 300,000 people left China in 2022, with another net loss of 300,000 projected this year. For context, that’s roughly double the annual net outflow from 2010 to 2017.

Other privately sourced data suggests that among those choosing to pack up and go are a growing number of China’s millionaires.

This is a problem for China — on a number of fronts.

Decreasing fertility rates and rising out-migration recently led China to lose its status as the world’s most populous country. More important than the superlative, these demographic trends will drag on Chinese living standards in the years ahead. This is especially true if those leaving the country are disproportionately higher-skilled, deeper-pocketed and younger, as appears to be the case. However impressive Beijing’s economic and scientific ambitions might appear, it will struggle to achieve them if the country’s top talent is always eyeing the exits.

China’s loss presents a huge opportunity for the United States, though.

Immigrants have long been the lifeblood of the U.S. economy and innovation. For more than a century, we have benefited from waves of people leaving difficult conditions in their home countries. In fact, the U.S. government has often worked hard to poach the top talent of our geopolitical adversaries. During the mid-20th century, for instance, we took in scientists from Germany (both those who worked for the Nazis and those persecuted by them); and part of our Cold War policy included siphoning off Soviet superstars.

These and other immigrants turned out to be productive workers, who in turn made our own homegrown workers more productive. This served our interests economically, militarily and geopolitically. It’s great marketing for Western democratic values, after all, to be a desirable destination for your rivals’ top talent.

Plus, bringing this coveted talent here means that same talent is not available there.

For all these reasons, I’ve previously argued for exploiting Russia’s brain drain. The same arguments apply to China, too. Perhaps especially to China, given that U.S. political leaders openly fear being surpassed by Chinese innovation or getting locked out of global supply chains that intersect with China. U.S. lawmakers from both parties often justify expensive new industrial policies and protectionist measures on such grounds.

But however much money we throw at semiconductor or battery manufacturing, we will struggle to achieve our own ambitions if we lack the talent to build and operate those high-tech facilities, as we now clearly do. As Cato Institute scholar Scott Lincicome put it: You can be a China hawk or you can be an immigration hawk, but you can’t really be both.

Right now, nervous Chinese professionals and entrepreneurs are streaming to Singapore and other countries. The United States should be encouraging them to bring their talents here instead. Unfortunately, we’ve mostly done the opposite.

Some U.S. senators, for instance, have pushed to deny visas to Chinese citizens who want to come to the United States to study science, citing supposedly unmanageable national security risks (even though no one is suggesting visiting foreign nationals, from any country, go unvetted). Scholars of Chinese descent already here are reportedly choosing to leave tenured jobs at U.S. institutions, citing a hostile political and cultural environment, not to mention occasional threats of violence.

Even some state governments are getting in on the red-baiting. Florida recently passed a law banning Chinese nationals from buying property, with several other states following suit.

The United States is a nation of immigrants; China is increasingly looking like a nation of emigrants. There’s an obviously play to be made here, if only we can get out of our own way.