Has China’s Young Thousand Talents program been successful in recruiting and nurturing top-caliber scientists?

Abstract

In this study, we examined China’s Young Thousand Talents (YTT) program and evaluated its effectiveness in recruiting elite expatriate scientists and in nurturing the returnee scientists’ productivity. We find that YTT scientists are generally of high caliber in research but, as a group, fall below the top category in pre-return productivity. We further find that YTT scientists are associated with a post-return publication gain across journal-quality tiers. However, this gain mainly takes place in last-authored publications and for high-caliber (albeit not top-caliber) recruits and can be explained by YTT scientists’ access to greater funding and larger research teams. This paper has policy implications for the mobility of scientific talent, especially as early-career scientists face growing challenges in accessing research funding in the United States and European Union

Measuring returning scientists’ success

China is a top sender of students overseas, and the Chinese government launched the Young Thousand Talents program to recruit and nurture high-caliber, early-career expatriate scientists who return to China after they receive doctorates abroad. Shi et al . examined how effective the program has been in supporting the young scholars’ productivity when they return to China compared with their peers that remained overseas. They found that the scholars were high (but not top) caliber and outperformed overseas peers in last-authored publications because of greater access to larger research teams and better research funding in China. —EEU

Abstract

High-caliber scientists who return to China from training abroad outperform peers who remain overseas in regard to publications and access to funding.