A Critical Approaches to Chinese Brain Drain Victim and Perpetrator v1.docx

 

Critical Approaches to Chinese Brain Drain: Victim and Perpetrator

Bernardo Bernardi ^[1]

Letícia F Rodrigues ^[2]

ABSTRACT 

 

This research paper aims to comprehend Brain Drain in a broad definition, seeking to understand this phenomenon, how and where it occurs and its main implications to a national State. China was chosen as the main example to this study because of its unique characteristics that put it both as a victim of this process and sometimes as a perpetrator. Since China is the country that lost the most of its skilled workers, mainly people with doctorates – in absolute numbers – to this process. Despite that, in the last few years the Chinese have been successfully reverting this phenomenon and attracting international workers through their soft and economic power, putting this country in a very special position in which is debatable whereas it act as a North or South country and its relationship with its neighbors.

 

Keywords: Brain Drain, China, North-South Relations, Skilled Workers and Brain Gain

  RESUMEN:

Este trabajo de investigación tiene como objetivo comprender la fuga de cerebros en una definición amplia, buscando comprender este fenómeno, cómo y dónde ocurre y sus principales implicaciones para un Estado nacional. China fue elegida como el ejemplo principal de este estudio debido a sus características únicas que la colocan como víctima de este proceso y, a veces, como perpetrador. Dado que China es el país que perdió la mayoría de sus trabajadores calificados, principalmente personas con doctorados, en números absolutos, en este proceso. A pesar de eso, en los últimos años los chinos han logrado revertir este fenómeno y atraer trabajadores internacionales a través de su poder blando y económico, colocando a este país en una posición muy especial en la que es discutible mientras actúa como un país del Norte o del Sur y su relación con sus vecinos.

Palavras-chaves: Fuga de cerebros, China, relaciones norte-sur, trabajadores calificados y ganancia de cérebros

 

INTRODUCTION

 

This paper aims to understand more about the phenomenon know as Brain Drain – the outflow of skilled workers from the least developed countries to developed countries – focusing in the Chinese case and its relations with its neighbors. Since China is one of the countries that is most affected by brain drain bust also is having success in these recent years in reversing this process, it poses an interesting case to be approached and understood. The objectives of this research includes shedding light about the different perspectives that can be used to understand the process know as brain drain.

Due to China’s unique background and characteristics, and with it’s influence growing in his neighborhoods, in the process of reverting the losses of brain drain they’ve been suffering, they also end up reproducing these domination, which has a serious social cost in human capital, specially for third world countries who cant bargain or compete in a war for human capital, and as a consequence, they may end up limiting the liberty of their own citizens to protect their human capital.

The first part seeks to understand Brain Drain as a broad concept, academic mobility is nothing new, but the intensity and volume of these students and scholars travel and share knowledge is unprecedented, great investments are made in skilled people, most of the times they received their education from a national State, and fleeing a country to work in another leaves serious social problems, problems that usually are solved by these people that are fleeing, and not only, while these people sometimes seeks to study and work abroad, they mainly focus in accomplishing the Developed World Agenda, solving problems for the developed world instead of building capacity and solving problems for the least developed countries, stealing their future.

In the second part, we approach the China’s case, and proceed to make an analyses in the number of students they lost to foreign nations in the period 1978-2013, splitting these time in five different periods and analyzing their characteristics and some brief remarks about the international system at that moment and the interdependency of these events.

In the third part, we briefly approach the case of Japan and Malaysia, these nations have been chosen because of their geographic proximity with China, their interdependence, proximity in language and historical factors. It’s important to remarks that’s brain drain does not depends only of policies or institutions in another countries that offer jobs, careers or scholarships, but also internal situations, specific from country to country, that also have a significant weight in the decisions of someone willing to go abroad. Then we briefly consider the Chinese response to this phenomenon and how they’ve been successfully reverting these losses, but by doing so they also tend to reproduces some of the mechanisms of domination that are associated with these power relations, and finally we consider some critiques and raise some questions about the roles of governmental institutions in this process.

 

1. BROAD DEFINITIONS TO BRAIN DRAIN: 

 

 The movement of students and scholars is nothing new in the history of higher education. Since medieval times, European universities formed a loose network in which their scholars played a key role in spreading ideas and knowledge. But what appears new today is that the sporadic, exceptional and limited movement of scholars and students, today has become more systematic, dense, multiple and transnational, due to the globalization process. Moreover, with the increasingly interactions in higher education and the interconnectedness between network of universities and academic associations further contributed to create new patterns of academic mobility.

These national policies and practices have not only changed the way in which academics mobilize and operate, it also transformed the landscape of higher education on a global scale. This discussion of academic mobility is largely viewed from an economic perspective, in which the concept of “brain drain”, “brain gain” and “brain circulation”. One example is the movement of international students from less developed countries to one more developed. This movement is perceived as a major form of brain drain. The loss of a talent have negative effects on its country of origin over the long term, because the country have made great investments on education of a person who ultimately leaves his/her home country. (QIONGQIONG, 2017).