Recent decades have seen an increasing presence of China-born tenured and tenure-track faculty in science and engineering (S&E) fields in US higher education institutions. The growing pool is a clear indication of the importance of Chinese scientists to the US academic research enterprise. Moreover, the pool has also become a target of the Chinese government and policy which is seeking to persuade Chinese scientists in the US to return to China. For instance, China launched the Thousand Talents Program in 2009 that aims to recruit global talent by offering generous personal compensation and lab funding. This raises a potential issue of ‘reverse brain drain’. Nevertheless, little is known about how vulnerable this population is to persuasion.  Are Chinese scientists embedded in professional networks as other foreign or US-born scientists? Do they receive the same level of rewards and recognition? How satisfied are they? This paper addresses these questions and others within an integrated social and human capital framework. The structure and relationship characteristics that make up professional networks help determine multiple important outcomes of scientists including grant getting ability, satisfaction, productivity and leadership.  In this study, we examine the professional networks of Chinese academic scientists working in the US higher education institutions and how the professional networks affect their productivity measures and career trajectories.

The study takes advantage of a new data set from an NSF-funded national study on the importance of professional networks for advancement, mobility and career outcomes for women and underrepresented minorities in STEM fields. The project conducted a nationwide survey of 9,925 tenured and tenure-track academic scientists in four fields - biology, biochemistry, engineering, and mathematics – across multiple different institution types including research intensive, research extensive, master comprehensive, liberal arts colleges and historically black colleges and universities.  Of the 3,000 respondents (40% response rate) 183 indentified China as their country of origin.  The paper selects two random samples, paired by survey strata, of non-Chinese foreign-born respondents and US-born respondents.  Analysis first compares the professional networks (structure and composition of teaching, advice and collaboration networks), departmental and institutional resources received, and key output variables (publications, time to tenure, grants, satisfaction, etc.) among the three groups.  The paper then applies regression analysis to understand how different human and social capital characteristics predict key science outputs and whether Chinese scholars depend on different types of resources and structures than their ‘other’ foreign-born and US-born counterparts.

This study will improve the understanding about the relationships among network structure, resources, research activities, and outputs of Chinese researchers who constitute the significant group of foreign-born academic scientists in the US S&E fields. The findings will shed light on whether there are key vulnerabilities (salary, structure, production, etc.).  The study will also provide insights into how effective the current Chinese government recruitment efforts are likely to be and what factors may be important for US universities to consider. Follow-up studies may examine professional networks, research activities and outputs of Chinese scientists after they return to China.