Top Chinese scientists flee Boston area as Harvard, MIT fall in rankings ; Silicon Valley also hit
Bullets:
Thousands of Chinese researchers and scientists are leaving top jobs in leading US universities and companies, to take positions in China.
The Cambridge area of Massachusetts is home to Harvard, MIT, and scores of leading companies, and was the number one source of returning Chinese research and engineering talent.
In second place is the Palo Alto-Berkeley cluster, which includes Stanford, University of California, and Silicon Valley.
The migration of top scientific and engineering talent back to China is accelerating, but began nearly a decade ago. And while the political situation between China and the United States certainly is a major motivation for many scientists to return, more important is the quality of the education systems.
Chinese universities are now claiming the top spots across all the hard science disciplines, while American colleges are tumbling.
Report:
Hundreds of top scientists from China have returned to China, from key posts in the United States. It’s especially notable in the hard sciences—Engineering, Computer Science, Math, Physics. We are halfway through 2025, so we only have data through the end of last year, but these trends were firmly in place already.
The scientists who leave cite these reasons, above. They feel unwelcome, they feel unsafe, they’re worried about their relationships with colleagues here in China.
For the Chinese scientists who do return, they come back to prestigious academic posts in top Chinese universities. They also get nice writeups in Chinese media. These are in English, and they’re good examples.
Zhan Hanyu isa leading researcher in optics, and moved to Nanjing University of Aeronautics, from a post at New Mexico State University and NASA.
Quan Guocong was at Meta—Facebook—and returned to Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou. He is a top expert in network optimization and caching technology.
Chen Jing was in the US for 15 years, and is an expert in Blockchain and computational economics. Her PhD is from MIT, and she just wants “to conduct the highest level research.” The best place for that was MIT, and she implies here that this is no longer true.
So from that handful of examples, we have returnees from New Mexico State, Ohio State and Silicon Valley, MIT—which is Boston. So it seems they’re coming back from everywhere, indiscriminately. But when the South China Morning Post dug in to the numbers, the top scientists are leaving Cambridge, Massachusetts at a higher rate than from anywhere else.
Cambridge is home to Harvard and MIT, along with high-tech parks and biotech firms. The Boston area was number one, followed by Silicon Valley—Palo Alto and Berkeley are Stanford, University of California, and the tech industry there.
Global politics are playing a major role, there is no question. These are the headlines that everyone is paying attention to, and obviously the political situation is accelerating the trends we’ve already seen. But the other major factor is that American universities—including those there, are falling in the rankings, while Chinese universities are rising, and fast. For example, in Physics research, China had the top three spots, and 8 of the top 10. MIT and Harvard—that’s Cambridge, were ranked #13 and #16. Stanford is #20.
We have the same problems in chemistry. China owns most of the top 20 rankings in Chemistry, and MIT is falling fast, in the rankings, from #14 to 31 in just two years.
Physics is important for everything, for all the engineering and manufacturing disciplines, as well as in space, defense, optics, semiconductors. Chemistry is critical in materials sciences, energy, biomedicine and pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing engineering.
We observe a strong “push-pull” effect, in these high-level departures. Chinese researchers are being pushed away by the unstable geopolitical situation—let’s just say that—but they also report feeling like they’re jumping off a sinking ship. American universities are losing their appeal now, because universities in Asia are just doing higher-quality work. That’s the “push” aspect.
The “pull” is that the Chinese posts are more attractive, and better paying. Scientists are offered top posts, and contract offers of $100,000 a year for 3 years, which is far higher than postdoctoral pay in the United States. This paragraph in Medium hits that point—these are prominent scientists and researchers who are leaving top posts in US universities, to take jobs here in China. Dozens of top scientists in Math, physics, AI, and computer science. These were considered the top places to be doing that work—the Ivy League, Cal, MIT—but China is developing very rapidly, and Chinese universities dominate in the hard-science rankings while these US programs are dropping.
The new policies involving restrictions on foreign students from attending top US universities—particularly Chinese students—they’re redundant. Long before President Trump was sworn in, the traffic was already flowing the other way.
Resources and links:
NBC, Blocked from Harvard, the world's star students weigh staying in Asia and Europe
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/harvard-international-student-ban-trump-china-europe-rcna209044
Channel News Asia, To stay or to go? Chinese students in the US mull future amid Trump’s visa crackdown
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/china-students-harvard-trump-academic-future-limbo-5162681
Reuters, 'Harvard refugee': Chinese students hunker down as U.S. blocks foreign enrollment
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/harvard-refugee-chinese-students-hunker-down-us-blocks-foreign-enrollment-2025-05-23/
Business Standard, Eyeing US exodus, China dangles high salaries to bring scientists home
https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/china-woos-us-scientists-researchers-amid-funding-cuts-trump-125051500734_1.html
Medium, Is the Mass Departure of Top-Tier Chinese Researchers Good for the U.S.?
https://medium.com/@davidsehyeonbaek/is-the-mass-departure-of-top-tier-chinese-researchers-good-for-the-u-s-f8e7a1840b28
New York Times, China Really Wants to Attract Talented Scientists. Trump Just Helped.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/world/asia/trump-science-visa-china.html
SCMP, Is the Mass Departure of Top-Tier Chinese Researchers Good for the U.S.?
SCMP, As China sweeps top spots, chemistry seems to be dying in the US. Is this a power shift?
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3300488/china-sweeps-top-spots-chemistry-seems-be-dying-us-power-shift?module=further_reading_RM&pgtype=article
SCMP, Prize-winning computer scientist Quan Guocong picks China post after years in US
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3301086/prize-winning-computer-scientist-quan-guocong-picks-china-post-after-years-us
SCMP, US research hub at heart of brain drain for scientists returning to China, study finds
SCMP, Chen Jing, award-winning computer scientist and blockchain expert, leaves US for China
Former US defence researcher Zhan Hanyu joins China’s elite aerospace university
Chinese Scientists Are Leaving the United States
Reverse Brain Drain? Exploring Trends among Chinese Scientists in the U.S.
https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/reverse-brain-drain-exploring-trends-among-chinese-scientists-us
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