And China welcomes them
By Jerry Grey
There are three amazing facts that I’ve recently discovered.
We’re seeing reports all over the place of scientists and leading entrepreneurs returning to China, we’re even seeing reports of American scientists such as Charles Lieber, coming to China after being convicted of an offence in the USA related to getting payments from China – something universities all around the world have been doing for decades, if not centuries, they solicit payments and they build laboratories, or conduct cutting edge research – in the US, it’s mainly used to improve their chances of winning wars, so they assume every country is like them and now they not only cancel Chinese payments to universities, they prosecute people who take them.
Wherever you are, welcome to another of my takes on China and this one is about the returning numbers of Chinese
Back in December, I noticed a State Council Information Office report stating that Chinese students are coming back to China in greater numbers than ever before, the numbers were up by 19%. Of course, 19% doesn’t mean much when viewed alone, but the real numbers are stunning. Just short of half a million Chinese kids returned from overseas studies to live, work and contribute to their homeland. 495,000 returning students, and this number, in 2025, was 79,400 higher than the number who came back in 2024.
Just a few days ago, the numbers for 2025 were released and it’s even more significant: according to the Global Times, reporting information from the Ministry of Education, 535,600 overseas graduates returned to China in 2025, while the number of Chinese students going abroad in the same year, exceeded 570,000.
As I was a teacher of international students for many years, I’ve literally seen thousands of students who went overseas and ended up in places like Canada, USA, the UK and Australia, a few went to New Zealand and quite a lot went to Europe because very often European universities are free and they teach in English. Many of them stayed overseas, it was quite common, some married, some got good jobs and some interned for a year or two before returning. However the vast majority have always come home, the numbers of people who stayed has never been significant, it just appears that way because there are so many of them.
Since Reform and opening, according to the State Council Information Office, 87% have returned home, the numbers are significant, up to 2024, a total of 8.88 million Chinese went abroad to study. 7.43 million of them, completed their studies, 6.44 million chose to return to China. leaving less than a million students over the last 40 years or so, who remained overseas. More recently, according to the same source, Since 2012, 5.63 million students have returned to China, accounting for 87 percent of all returnees since the late 1970s. A lot of people might not join the dots on this but Xi Jinping became President in 2013, and I see this huge increase in the number from that time as a resurgence of national confidence.
And now, we’re now seeing a lot of the people who stayed actually returning home, the Ministry of Education doesn’t produce figures on this but, according to Stanford University, between 2010 and 2021. By 2021, nearly 67% of Chinese researchers have left U.S. positions and returned to China. Stanford reported that the main reason is they were driven by improved research funding but also emphasised there is a “chilling effect” from U.S. policies. There are highly qualified extremely capable and competent people who are now ready to contribute to China’s development. Proof of this, if it’s needed, is that China is now home to 1,405 of the world’s most highly cited researchers, nearly tripling since 2018. That’s what makes this information so significant.
So, young talent seeks education overseas but returns home to put that education to good use, and highly qualified and well-educated scientists and researchers from China are returning to China mostly from the USA but also from other countries – this is VERY good news for China but very bad news for the places they’re leaving – or perhaps I should say, the places from which they are being pushed away.
The other amazing fact I recently discovered was that now, there are a great many more foreign students in China, much more than I expected, many of them here on scholarships. Last week I was in Shenzhen at a campus of three different universities, The Harbin Institute of Technology, Beijing University and Tsinghua University all share a campus, because I was there for the day and went to the canteen for lunch, I was able to view the incredible number of foreign students there, I chatted to one of them from Russia and he told me he’d moved from Xi’an three years ago after one year there to study in this campus because of the fact that the entire course was conducted in English. He also emphasised that his course fees, even though he was not a scholarship student were significantly lower than at home or in Europe.
According to figures released by the Ministry of Education, China enrolled 380,000 international students from 191 countries and regions during the 2024-2025 academic year, but there’s another very interesting trend here, most of these students come from Asian or African countries but in 2019, there were about 11,000 US students. However, a March 2026 report by the non-profit US-China Education Trust estimated that fewer than 2,000 American students are now studying in China each year. Once again, this is a disappointing trend and will mean there are going to be fewer and fewer Americans with knowledge of China but more importantly, so few students getting an education in the one country that is excelling in all fields of research. I can only describe this as a very short sighted policy on the part of America. The price they will pay in lost opportunities and lost knowledge will be a generation away but it will definitely harm their progress.
What’s the bottom line here? The bottom line is that the Chinese education system is benefiting, Chinese society benefits and every country in the world which sends its young brains to China will join in the progress China makes. Countries with policies that exclude, penalise and punish China are shooting themselves in their academic feet!
Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research
