Hard to say, PRC generating ~5M STEM per year which is multiple times more than US can generate via domestic education and brain drain. That's the skilled human capita gap where US is losing hard, PRC adding conservatively more than 5x more STEM talent per year, set to pass US total STEM workforce of 35M within next few years (PRC STEM @ ~20M as of 2020), and medium term (2050) PRC on trend have 50-100M STEM. It's not so much US decline as PRC ascend and relative gap massively swinging in PRC favour well past 2050s. Now factor in indigenous PRC academic and S&T industries have increasingly more opportunties retaining more and more tier1 PRC talent, the fact that best PRC talent don't flood into west anymore - this isn't the 00s where PRC best was sent abroad as state policy or natural outflow due to lack of domestic opportunities. Even international students are now mostly B tier talents that couldn't hack it in PRC gaokao but had wealthy enough families to send them abroad. TLDR US can't compete on generating talent vs PRC massive population base effect + human capital production via academic reforms coming to fruition, and US brain drain of PRC talent (itself reducing due to geopolitics as mentioned in this article) can no longer meaningfully inhibit PRC talent pipeline.
PRC generates STEM talent, most but not all stays in the PRC. Meanwhile, people come from all over the world to do STEM in the USA. So ya, Tsinghua and PKU are still, in 2023, are providers of STEM talent in America. And even if China decided to close off emigration tomorrow, we still have India and Europe, it isn't going to make it win as much, especially with the its own demographic bomb ticking (they will need to import talent as well in the next 50 years).
Before China's hardcore response the pandemic scared a bunch of people into emigrating, you might have had a point. We will see now that China is opening up again if it goes back to the trend it had in 2019 or not.
Most of PRC talent now stays in the PRC because they generate significantly more than west can brain drain or there is emmigration opportunities. The amount of top C9 candidates flowing to the west is decreasing with each year because indigenous ecosystem has good opportunities for them unlike 10-20 years ago. It's not India/IIT where shit tier domestic enviroment where latest study shows something absurd like 90%/60%/30% of top 10/100/1000 Indian talent leaves country within a few years. Except in certain fields, one would be hard pressed to find same # of Chinese talent who graduated at top of the districts/classes going abroad anymore. Most are staying in PRC, because opportunties abound when you're at top and QoL pretty good. Leaving is harder than ever.
Put some numbers on PRC talent outflow, it's insignificant to what stays even post narrative of covid scaring Chinese to leave. And I know many who left, mostly retiring people whose just looking for places to park their money abroad. But talent that moves PRC up strategic values chains in S&T, very few, and as this article points, established strategic talent are moving back in record numbers where there's more upward mobility without red scare. This is without mentioning PRC students to NA has basically halved post covid. Dumb napkin math for illustration: US taking 4/10 PRC talent from before vs 3/100 now. The former subsantially degrades PRC talent pipeline, the latter barely makes a dent. And If US can only add 20 talent per year, then PRC's net 97 is going to matter over time, as in short/medium term time. Maybe talent import is needed after 50 years, at a point it's to sustain a PRC that has 2-3x more skilled workforce than US. But A) that's really not a competition anymore B) long enough time horizon that it's hard to speculate.
Yes US still have access to EU/IN talent, but again politics limit how much they can brain drain / absorb, so net inflow of US talent is no where close to net PRC talent production. Or people from "all over world" is basically ~1B (granted set to grow) English speakers (including non 1st language) or about the pool of Mandarin speakers. Remove PRC talent and US loses a huge chunk of talent access, especially from PRC pipeline with relatively proven ability to generate useful talent. And ultimately this matters because PRC making 50-100M STEM by 2050 while US population only set to expand by 40M is an insurmountable skilled workforce gap. It's not a demographic bomb as unparallel divident. Hence I doubt PRC need to import high end talent 50-100m STEM is stupid amount to make jobs for. Denying US PRC talent isn't about crippling US talent procurement, which US immigration policy does itself. It's about retaining PRC compatible talent - as you say, US can draw from English world, PRC largely rely from drawing from within. US denying itself large segment of talent that only benefits PRC to retain is a relative win. It's like the one area where could US win by default but chooses to cede.
PRC will remain effectively closed to talent, so they have to produce their own and what they lose to emigration they hardly get back. Put it this way: a whole generation of Chinese previous STEM students from top universities are now in upper leadership positions...in the USA. It remains to be seen if similar younger talent now will grow to that under the Chinese 996 system.
> Denying US PRC talent isn't about crippling US talent procurement, which US immigration policy does itself. It's about retaining PRC compatible talent - as you say, US can draw from English world, PRC largely rely from drawing from within. US denying itself large segment of talent that only benefits PRC to retain is a relative win. It's like the one area where could US win by default but chooses to cede.
I don't know how you can say this with a straight face when PRC immigration policies are much much worse. The USA has a system that is hard to get through, sure, but many many people get through it with permanent residency and citizenship at the end. Very very few get through the PRC's immigration system, even of Chinese descent, as you say all China can do is retain talent.
> It's like the one area where could US win by default but chooses to cede.
Again, the fact that the USA grants 740k green cards a year is not small potatoes, and many of those are in tech, high level STEM positions of talent. When I worked in China, I was the only foreigner in my team, maybe a few foreigners in our entire lab. Now, I'm working at Google in the USA, I can count the born-in-America types on one hand, most of my coworkers are immigrants, a long with a lot of young Chinese new grads. It doesn't feel like much as changed on the ground, but ya, Indian immigrants are gaining lots of ground over Chinese immigrants in leadership positions and such, which is something I wouldn't have predicted 20 years ago (look at the top CEO positions).
US needs immigration to fulfill new workforce demands, PRC doesn't. PRC generates more talent than US can bring in via immigration. Hence trend towards large workforce gap.
US does not produce and brain drain enough talent for her needs. Yes US has one of the more permissive immigration systems in the world, but IT'S NO LONGER ENOUGH relative to PRC indigenous talent pipeline. 3/4 million is small potatoes when you're up against 5M+. US isn't competing against PRC on immigration, it's competing on net workforce improvement. US unlikely to have political space to massively ramp up immigration, maybe can close shortage gap, but increasing by 3-4M to stay at parity with PRC isn't politically happening.
>with a straight face
You're overinterpretting, I'm not saying US is ceding absolute immigration advantage, I'm saying it's ceding it's advantage of being able to brain drain PRC talent via generating bad domestic enviroment for ethnically Chinese talent that is pushing many to leave.
>whole generation of Chinese previous STEM students from top universities are now in upper leadership positions...in the USA
Yes, which I acknowledged. But now they're largely staying in PRC for years (precovid) US isn't braindraining PRC best on scale that can degrade PRC indigenous industries anymore. There is a generational difference talent willing to emmigrate. Hence US ceding her all upside advantage of draining/denying PRC access to her best, and now has to redirect to draining more of (likely) India's best. This is arguably triple win for PRC.
All of which is to say, yes US immigration is still a US strength, but it's advantage is vastly diminished vs PRC building up indigenous talent pipeline over last few decades. That +2 advantage was insurmountable gap when most of world was at +0, or even -1 (brain drain), but now it's up against PRC's+5. And where US could feasibly degrade PRC +5 into +4, it chose not to, instead pushing that -1 onto India.
Hard to say, PRC generating ~5M STEM per year which is multiple times more than US can generate via domestic education and brain drain. That's the skilled human capita gap where US is losing hard, PRC adding conservatively more than 5x more STEM talent per year, set to pass US total STEM workforce of 35M within next few years (PRC STEM @ ~20M as of 2020), and medium term (2050) PRC on trend have 50-100M STEM. It's not so much US decline as PRC ascend and relative gap massively swinging in PRC favour well past 2050s. Now factor in indigenous PRC academic and S&T industries have increasingly more opportunties retaining more and more tier1 PRC talent, the fact that best PRC talent don't flood into west anymore - this isn't the 00s where PRC best was sent abroad as state policy or natural outflow due to lack of domestic opportunities. Even international students are now mostly B tier talents that couldn't hack it in PRC gaokao but had wealthy enough families to send them abroad. TLDR US can't compete on generating talent vs PRC massive population base effect + human capital production via academic reforms coming to fruition, and US brain drain of PRC talent (itself reducing due to geopolitics as mentioned in this article) can no longer meaningfully inhibit PRC talent pipeline.