Notes from the Field

Clay Wescott, in his article “Realizing Professional Knowledge Exchange: The People’s Republic of China and the Philippines,” concludes that the Chinese government has transformed “brain drains” into gains by using knowledge exchanges with overseas Chinese professionals (OCPs) to support development within China. He documents this with numerous examples of how China has benefited from OCPs’ investments, knowledge, and skills. However, many Chinese experts would dispute this claim, based on their analyses of spending patterns. Over half of China’s higher education budget goes to fund a small number of prestigious universities, which produce graduates who, for the most part, go to the United States and do not return. Therefore it would help to assess these hypothesized “brain gains” with a more detailed and comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the expenditures incurred in nurturing these OCPs before they go overseas.

Another significant issue is the question of OCPs’ underlying motivations. According to Wescott, many of them (such as those who overthrew the Qing dynasty in 1911 and others involved in the birth of the communist regime in 1949) returned to China to an unknown future and a highly risky career without any financial inducements. OCPs are generally politically passive in their host countries, yet are interested in becoming engaged in their home country’s affairs. This would indicate that the main reason OCPs have repatriated is not for financial considerations, but rather for the more promising opportunities for systemic change—both economic and political—since the market-based economic reforms of the late 1970s.

Without emphasizing this point, it is difficult to understand the political considerations that lie at the heart of the Chinese government’s policies related to OCPs. The projected-centered approach might, as this article argues, work against long-term and multifaceted knowledge exchanges. However, by focusing on specific projects and assessing them on a case-by-case basis, the government retains the final say on what and with whom to exchange. This allows the entry of politically neutral investments and technologies and conversely the exclusion of some kinds of networking activities (such as information and communications technologies [ICTs] and international NGOs except the Red Cross) that have unclear or suspect overseas connections. The Chinese government has been so highly selective of external innovations because it wants only the jobs and prosperity that can justify its legitimacy—and nothing more.

However, this policy of encouraging the entry of “neutral” technologies and discouraging others (like ICTs and most international NGOs) highlights the dilemma inherent in a short-term and self-interested political perspective on technology transfer. By contrast, it has been easier for India—a Western political ally—to develop economically by importing even politically sensitive Western information and communications technologies than it has been for China under similar circumstances.