Rhetoric not enough to halt brain drain

For the past three decades, the Chinese diaspora has been swollen by mainlanders who have gone overseas to study and abandoned their intention to return home afterwards. Since the mainland began opening up in 1978, as many as 1 million mainlanders are estimated to have left for study overseas. State media estimates that more than two-thirds of those who have left since the 1980s have chosen not to return. Most are now established in careers overseas.

China's loss has been the west's gain, for it is there that most of these mainlanders are to be found. Like generations of Chinese before them, these students have proved very successful emigrants, adept at interacting and integrating with the communities in which they live and resourceful at finding outlets in capitalist societies for their entrepreneurial spirit. They have a legitimate self-interest in what life and work is like today on the mainland.

In the initial stages of the mainland's opening up, many students overseas were hesitant about coming home until they saw more evidence of a change for the better. This reluctance was compounded by the impact of the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident. In recent years more mainland graduates and post-graduates have returned, encouraged by the country's continued opening up and impressive economic development, and the prospect of expanded career and research opportunities.

Some do not because they find opportunities in their chosen career and research fields more abundant abroad, or they may have begun families and put down roots. But others more amenable to returning still have to reconcile career and lifestyle concerns, for example professional freedom and official corruption, environmental pollution and problematical access to quality and affordable family health and education services. These are valid concerns, highlighted during the recent National People's Congress.

Doubts swept away by the success stories of many who have returned are just as easily revived by the reasons given by those who have returned but did not stay, or who began doing business on the mainland but did not persevere. Though impressed by the economic development, they have been discouraged by tough competition for jobs and disappointing salaries, stifling bureaucracy and corruption that filters down to petty officialdom.

The reality is that China remains a developing country that is many years away from being able to offer the kind of opportunities to all its bright young people who are abroad. For a long time to come, the country will, like many others in the developing world, continue to suffer from an exodus of some of its best and brightest to developed economies.

Beijing is right to enhance the nation's ability to compete for a bigger share of the sharpest young mainland talent that has been honed in foreign universities, research laboratories and executive offices. The new rules are therefore a welcome initiative.

But if the nation is to make any significant progress in reversing a brain drain to the west, there has to be a tangible effort to see that the rhetoric from the top about making the mainland a better place to live and work is put into practice in the field. That should also include an open door to those who left during troubled times and the freedom of movement that emigrant students take for granted. Just as important is a need to ensure that home-grown talent does not feel discriminated against for missing out on opportunities to study abroad.