Wu Guangqiang

jw368@163.com

GOOD news for both China and global talents! According to the newly formed State Immigration Administration, China has granted permanent residency to a record number of foreigners since April when the new agency came into being and pledged to further streamline applications for qualified foreign applicants to obtain Chinese “green cards.”

A total of 1,881 have been granted the status by the end of June, an equivalent of the total of last year. About 1 million foreigners lived in China last year, double the number in 2000.

Those granted permanent resident status in the past two months include Nobel laureates, leading researchers, entrepreneurs, top managerial staff and their families.

Yet the number of expats granted permanent residency is still insignificant compared with the country’s huge population and the massive size of China’s economy.

China did not introduce its green card system until 2004, but since then only foreign family members of Chinese nationals, foreigners who have worked as elite talents, and those who made significant contributions or large investments were able to apply for permanent residency. A large number of foreigners have appealed to the Chinese Government to relax its strict criteria.

A blend of factors is exerting increasing pressure on China’s demand for talents: an aging population and declining birth rates, the rapid economic growth and a shortage of talents in fledgling sectors such as AI and blockchain.

Competition for talents has never been so tense as it is today both globally and at home. The international competition, in essence, is the tussle for talents.

One of the secrets behind America’s continuous dominance in the economy, science and technology, military and arts is its open and flexible immigration policy, which has lured millions of talented and creative people from all over the world.

A glance at the list of 2016 Nobel Prize winners shows two things: Americans still dominated the list, and none of the American winners were born in America except Bob Dylan, an influential songwriter and singer.

One of the well-recognized successes of talent introduction occurred right after the end of World War II. When Berlin was taken by the Allied forces in 1945, the U.S. sent 3,000 scientists to Germany to select and hire talented people, and as a result, they flew over 2,000 German scientists back home, including 120 rocket experts. In the following years, tens of hundreds of German scientists, engineers and their families moved to and settled down in the U.S.

This mass introduction of talents to the U.S. significantly reshaped the world’s science and technology territories. Britons and Germans dominated Nobel Prizes in natural science before World War II, but since World War II, Americans have virtually monopolized them. In fact, the so-called American “fathers” of the rocket, hydrogen bomb, and computer were all from Europe.

In contrast, talents from overseas studying and working in China are outnumbered by outgoing talents; China has suffered a talent deficit for a long time, leaving itself in an unfavorable situation in sci-tech competition.

As a result, despite China’s rapid progress in science and technology, it is still lagging behind the U.S. in its most cutting-edge fronts. The U.S. and other tech powers are leading China by 20-30 years in core technologies such as semi-conductors, system software, commercial aircraft and biological machines.

China-made smartphones and computers sell well globally, but the core components like storage, memory chips and operating systems are all imported from the U.S., Japan and South Korea. The recent ZTE incident reminds us that China’s Achilles’ heel of a lack of core technologies must be overcome.

The Global Talent Competitiveness Index 2017 (GTCI) released by INSEAD, an international graduate business school, basically reflects a nation’s ability to grow, attract and retain talents. China ranks 54th while Switzerland tops the chart, followed by Singapore and the U.S.

To grow from a manufacturing giant to a sci-tech power, China needs to reverse the long-standing brain drain to a massive brain gain.

Besides attracting Chinese students studying and working overseas back home, China should open its door wider to foreign talents, encouraging them to work and do business in China. Red tape and restrictions should be further reduced over residence and work permits.

China should even consider a bolder immigration policy to offer a new home for global talents.

(The author is an English tutor and freelance writer.)