How can Beijing attract top-tier Chinese AI professionals based abroad?

China’s strength in training large numbers of AI talent has not been matched by equally robust development environments.

Photo: Xinhua Beijing should shift its strategy and improve ways to attract and retain top Chinese AI professionals as America’s accelerating integration of artificial intelligence into military and national security systems puts such talent in a bind.

As geopolitical tensions rise, many highly skilled Chinese researchers working at US tech and research institutions are confronting a painful dilemma, according to Dai Mingjie, a researcher at the Institute of Public Policy at the Guangzhou-based South China University of Technology.

Tighter security reviews, possible isolation from sensitive projects and identity conflicts were forcing them to “choose a side”, Dai said in an article published on the institute’s social media account on Monday. “Faced with this situation, China should build regionally embedded talent ecosystems that allow top talent to truly integrate into the domestic innovation system, take root and grow within industry-academia-research collaboration,” Dai wrote.

Such a strategy would “help the country transition from a major trainer of AI talent to a genuine development highland for talent”, she added.

China’s strength in training large numbers of AI talent has not been matched by an equally robust development scene.

More than a quarter of top-tier AI researchers at US institutions – 27 per cent – were from China in 2019, according to data from MacroPolo, a think tank of the Paulson Institute.

By 2022, this figure had climbed to 38 per cent.

MacroPolo’s 2024 Global AI Talent Tracking Report said China trained about half of the world’s AI talent globally, compared with the US training 17.5 per cent.

Yet, retention in America remained strong.

A 2025 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace sample of 100 leading Chinese-origin AI researchers showed that 87 still worked in the US and only 10 had returned to China, with the remaining three affiliated with institutions in other countries.

Despite an increasing number of Chinese returning home in recent years owing to better domestic prospects, family considerations and geopolitical tensions, many top-tier researchers still choose to stay in the US.

Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, a dedicated division for the tech giant’s R&D of artificial general intelligence and superintelligence, provided a vivid example.

Half of its initial “AI super talent” cohort had Chines

原文链接: 南华早报