Prospect of Returning Home Frightens Chinese Students

Raymond Chen had a goal when he moved to the United States from Shanghai three years ago: to return home someday with skills that would enhance his country’s quest to become modern.

“Most of us (students) are trying to help China’s economy,” said Chen, 25, a graduate student in electrical engineering at UC Berkeley who allowed his name to be used because he said he believes it is already on a government blacklist. “I think most people planned to go back--or at least to help China if they went back or not.”

Going home has become a frightening prospect, however, for many of the 40,000 Chinese studying in the United States since the political crackdown in their native country. And that poses a dilemma for the Chinese economy: The permanent absence of these scholars would mean a sacrifice of skills in science, engineering, business and other fields where advanced knowledge is in short supply.

“The potential impact is very substantial,” said D. Gale Johnson, a specialist in agricultural economics at the University of Chicago. “Once again, the Chinese will have wasted the best of a generation, as they did in the Cultural Revolution. These students are some of the best and brightest, and I think the majority of them will be very reluctant to go back.”

Even before the recent crackdown, many of China’s foreign scholars had postponed their return, choosing instead to save money, improve their English and exercise newly acquired skills in U.S. laboratories and workplaces. But many students viewed this brain drain as short-term, maintaining that ultimately they would go home.

Since the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in and around Beijing’s Tian An Men Square, however, some of China’s most able students are re-examining where they will live and use their training. Already, the U.S. government has obliged to some extent, announcing that Chinese students may stay in the United States for at least another year.

“I definitely want to stay here for as long as I can,” said a UCLA graduate student from China who asked not to be identified by name for fear that Chinese authorities would retaliate against his family.

Sudden Flood of Chinese

The economic dilemma is rooted in an unusual experiment launched by China’s leaders in the late 1970s. Suddenly, after years of restricting U.S. study, they allowed tens of thousands of Chinese students to come here, mostly at the graduate level. The effort was extraordinary in scope: In just a decade, the Chinese became the largest cadre of foreign students in the United States, according to the Institute of International Education in New York.

“The number of students has been spectacular, and the increase in a short period of time has been astounding,” said Lowell Dittmer, a political science professor and China specialist at Berkeley.

The experiment yielded positive results quickly. U.S.-educated engineers have become common at large Chinese construction enterprises, for example. By some estimates, American universities have furnished more than half the scientific doctoral degrees now held in China. Since 1979, 20,000 students have returned after U.S. studies, according to Chinese government figures, some gaining influential roles in government and industry.

“Certainly, in the fields of science and technology, there’s no question that people who have studied in America have had a great impact,” said Leo A. Orleans, a China scholar and consultant to the Library of Congress.

But in many ways, China’s investment in foreign study--financed in large part by the host American institutions--has yet to pay off.

Often, returning students and scholars have been given tasks far below their level of training because of the economy’s limitations. Some holders of doctoral degrees, for instance, serve as guides and translators because they speak English. In other cases, Chinese institutions simply cannot afford the advanced scientific equipment that students took for granted in high-tech U.S. laboratories.

As a result, some who returned have been bitterly disappointed at the work awaiting them. Many others, mindful of such complaints, have postponed going home.

“You just don’t have all the things you need to do the work,” complained a Chinese engineering student at Berkeley, who also asked not to be identified. “They don’t have the equipment. If I don’t have these computers, I can’t do anything.”

The UCLA graduate student argued that Chinese institutions often undermine those with foreign training. To make the point, he drew an unfavorable comparison to a famous Santa Monica think-tank: “If there was a RAND Corp. in China, who do you think would be the head of it?” asked the student, 25. “It would be someone with an elementary school education, an idiot.”

About 73,000 Chinese have received visas to study in this country since 1979, according to official U.S. figures. Currently, more than 29,000 are pursuing degrees, mainly at the Ph.D. level and most often in science, mathematics and engineering. Another 10,000 Chinese scholars are here in non-degree programs, according to the Institute of International Education.

Of the 73,000 awarded U.S. visas, perhaps 10,000 are unaccounted for, said Peggy Blumenthal, a vice president with the nonprofit institute. “Either they didn’t come here or they’re in some (immigration) status that’s uncountable,” she said.

In recent years, there have been various accounts that Chinese officials sought to rein in students who failed to go home. Reports have circulated widely that officials planned to impose monetary penalties against their families and to set clear-cut limits on how long students could remain abroad. Despite such reports, which reached a crescendo last year, Chinese officials seemed to stay lenient, at least until recently.

“For a while, a lot of the students got worried,” recalled Susan L. Shirk, a China specialist at UC San Diego. But when the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles continued to show flexibility, she said, “the students relaxed.”

For those who have gone home, a different set of issues has emerged: Does China really need a continued influx of advanced scientists at this modest stage of its economic development?

While its top scholars wrestle with questions about state-of-the-art physics, China’s economy has wrestled with 20% inflation, energy shortages and rising unemployment in the countryside. Despite a booming 10% growth rate in recent years, China remains far from developed in most regions.

It is most noted for such low-tech industries as toys and textiles; foreign investors often view it as a place to assemble things made elsewhere. China competes with such relatively undeveloped nations as Thailand and the Philippines for foreign investment. Neighbors such as Hong Kong use it as a source of cheap labor.

Given such realities, some experts argue that China would benefit if more foreign students pursued down-to-earth business skills, such as management and planning, rather than prestigious science programs.

“The overall idea of managing people seems not to be in their vocabulary,” said Godwin Wong, a professor of business administration at Berkeley and a board member of a university in China’s Henan province.

But China’s most heated issues surrounding foreign study these days have little to do with business and economics--and everything to do with politics.

This is because those returning have brought home more than technical training to help their country: They have brought the influence of such values as freedom, capitalism and the consumer-oriented life style of the Western world. Thus along with their new skills have come the seeds of political discontent.

“Fortunately or unfortunately, during the (education) process they also learned the American way of living--which is not something that the elders back home have been exposed to,” said Wong, whose family moved from mainland China to Hong Kong when he was a child in the 1950s.

And that, it appears, has alienated the authoritarian government from many of its most talented students, and vice versa. As a result, politically active foreign students often fear that career opportunities back home have been harmed severely.

Berkeley’s Chen said his early plans to help China’s economy are on hold.

“If I cannot stay in this country,” he said, “I’ll probably go to other countries.”