From my experience, I don't think this is true (at least not in the way that matters). I finished my PhD in CS as few years ago from a good school and I am now a researcher in industry. In my time in grad school and industry, I have only seen one of the many Chinese nationals I met during my studies return to China. The Chinese researchers and interns I work with have no desire to return to China. The interns express concerns about job opportunities and quality of life if they were to return to China after finishing graduate school. I have never met any non-Chinese researchers who expressed interest in working in China either in industry or academia.

Obviously this is anecdotal so take from that what you will. The computer graphics and machine learning communities in academia and industry are small (even with the ML/AI explosion), if this was happening in any significant amount it would be difficult to miss it.

As for research output, I think there are definitely more top-tier papers from Chinese universities than in the past. It still seems like there are more Chinese surnames from Europe and NORAM universities than from Chinese ones. The big names in the field are still in European and NORAM universities.

I wonder how these are articles you linked are counting numbers. It's hard to understand how something like this could be happening completely under the radar.

Anecdotal experience can often be misleading, that's why statistics are valuable. It's clear that at least some students are returning, and now thanks to rampant racism in US a lot of ethnic Chinese scientists are going back to China.

At the end of the day, a single individual can educate many thousands of people or produce high quality research that will advance the country. There's a pretty famous case of this Qian Xuesen who is the father of Chinese space program. He got his education in US, and then left to China during the red scare.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen

Many thousands of people like him are doing the same today.

And finally, researches are leaving Europe for China nowadays as well https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-07-19/china-...

However, all that aside, the most important point is that China has a very good education system that's accessible to everyone, and they have a large population. This is coupled with government having a lot of direction over the industry and actively funding the types of research and technology development that's strategic for China. This is a recipe for success.

I would never want to live in a country with a regime like China's. In fact if my work wants to send me there to visit I'll refuse.

Quality of life is important and being monitored 24/7 is not my idea of a good life.

That's entirely a you problem.

It's much easier to apply for your local flagship state school or go the CC -> state school route than to pass the margins needed for the gaokao though? I think most would agree that the US admissions process is significantly easier, even for elite colleges (UC Berkeley), than it is for comparable institutions in China (Peking).

Having a stricter admissions process just means that you're selecting for higher level of competence to start with. In absolute numbers, China completely dwarfs the US in terms of STEM graduates. China had 4.7 million recent STEM graduates in 2016, while the U.S. had a mere 568,000.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/08/future-tech-dominance-...