The 14th Five-Year Plan of the Communist Party of China (CPC) regards the development of innovative science and technology as a strategic goal of the CPC, and proposes specific measures to cultivate strategic scientific and technological talents and attract high-end overseas talents. Some experts believe that this talent plan is an important extension of the CCP’s “Thousand Talents Plan,” but it is still far from enough to achieve a strong science and technology nation by attracting foreign talent alone, and China’s limited research environment limits the achievement of the goal of “strong science and technology nation.
The 13th National People’s Congress (NPC), which just concluded on Thursday, adopted a resolution on the 14th Five-Year Plan and the outline of the 2035 Vision, the second of which states that China will bring in more high-end talents from overseas to help advance the development of cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, Life sciences, aerospace and aviation, in order to achieve “The second part of the resolution states that China will bring in more top talents from overseas to help promote the development of cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, life sciences, aerospace and aviation, in order to achieve the goal of “strengthening the country through science and technology.
The resolution also states that in the next five years, the CPC will “implement a more open talent policy and build a highland for scientific research and innovation that gathers outstanding talents from Home and abroad.” At the same Time, the CPC will “improve the policy of stopping residence for foreign high-end talents and professionals to work, research and exchange in China, improve the system of permanent residence for foreigners in China, and explore the establishment of a technical immigration system.” The policies include improving the system of remuneration and benefits, children’s Education, social security, and tax concessions for foreign talents, in addition to which the document states that internationalized technical organizations will be established and foreigners will be allowed to work in China’s state-run technical institutions.
CCP to Push New Policies to Attract Top Overseas Talents
“Thousand Talents Program” Abandoned by Experts: “Change the Soup, Not the Medicine“
U.S.-based Chinese economist Cheng Xiaonong said in an interview with this station that the new policy of introducing talents in the new five-year plan is an extension of the previous “Thousand Talents Plan” pushed by the Chinese Communist Party, which is essentially to steal foreign intellectual property and advanced technology by “poaching” people. But the new talent program is more blatant than the previous “Thousand Talents Program”: “The so-called ‘poaching’ used to be done by technical spies, but when technical spies were tightened up by the U.S., the idea was to poach people, even with technology. The technology is also being tapped. The technology will be stolen naturally when the people are poached. The goal is still to catch up in key areas such as aerospace and artificial intelligence, all in order to expand the military and prepare for war.”
The Chinese Communist Party’s Overseas High-Level Talents Admission Program (commonly known as the “Thousand Talents Program”) was officially launched in 2008, and some Thousand Talents Program scholars have since come under the scrutiny of the FBI for alleged espionage activities in the U.S. Since 2018, the FBI has increased its investigation of Thousand Talents Program scholars. The FBI has started to increase the number of arrests and prosecutions of Thousand Talents Program scholars, which has been jokingly referred to as the Thousand Talents Program’s “Jail List. At the same time, the U.S. State Department shortened visas for Chinese students studying in sensitive fields such as aviation and engineering from five years to one year. In addition, the U.S. Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 that year, which included a provision requiring the U.S. Department of Defense to suspend funding and other grants to individuals participating in talent programs in China, Iran, North Korea or Russia, a provision believed to be a direct reference to the Chinese Communist Party’s “Thousand Talents Program.
In September 2018, the Thousand Talents Program Youth Program Review Working Group asked relevant units and institutions not to mention the Thousand Talents Program in order to protect the safety of overseas talents. Our correspondent noted that the words “Thousand Talents Program” and other related words have long been blocked on the Internet in mainland China.
Li Hengqing, an economist at the Institute for Information and Strategic Studies, a private institution in the United States, also believes that the core of the new talent policy and the “Thousand Talents Program” are no different. He analyzed the proposed new policy to avoid international sanctions for spying on the Thousand Talents Program: “During the four years of development, the Chinese Communist Party has relied on attracting outside wisdom, and the specific measures taken are simply to poach talent and steal technology. If neither of these methods worked well, the large Chinese market was used to force foreign companies to exchange foreign technology (?). Not quite sure what he means). The Thousand Talents Program is no longer daring to be mentioned, and forced technology transfer is facing increasing international pressure, so now it’s simply immigration so that (other countries) can’t deal with the CCP in the same way they did in the past.”
James Andrew Lewis, vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank, analyzed that the CCP’s new “money-for-talent” policy will not achieve the desired goal: “People go to China for the money, but many don’t stay. People go to China for the money, but many don’t stay because life in a police society is unbearable. The best time to immigrate to China was at the beginning of this century, but this influx stopped in 2012.”
Chinese students seeking employment at a job fair in Hefei, Anhui Province
Political repression squeezes research environment, ‘chance of overtaking’ is slim
According to Reuters, former Chinese Communist Party Minister of Industry and Information Technology Miao Wei recently said at a CPPCC meeting that it will take three decades for China to become a manufacturing power: “Basic capabilities are still weak, and key core technologies are controlled by others.”
In recent years, the Trump administration has adopted a series of sanctions against the CCP in core areas, including the inclusion of cutting-edge Chinese companies such as huawei and SMIC in the list of entities and the implementation of export bans, and as a result, the CCP government has made improving its capacity for independent innovation in cutting-edge technologies a priority in its work, in an attempt to avoid being “necked” by international, especially U.S., technologies and high-end parts The Chinese government has made it a priority to improve its capacity for independent innovation in cutting-edge technologies, in an attempt to avoid being “necked” by international technology and high-end parts, especially by the United States, and to achieve “overtaking” in the technology war.
According to Li Hengqing, China’s independent R&D capability in science and technology is at a low level due to the centralized system and the lack of a free and open environment, critical spirit and awareness of intellectual property protection. Therefore, if the Chinese Communist Party wants to achieve the goal of “strong science and technology” as soon as possible and get rid of the dependence on overseas high-end technology and core manufacturing chain, it can only take the shortcut of poaching people and technology: “If a society wants to have a good result in science and technology innovation, the most important condition is to have a free environment. A free environment is the most important condition for a society to have a good result in science and technology innovation, and a free thinking and critical spirit is the soil for innovation, which is very limited in China. There is also the protection of intellectual property rights. If someone else invests a lot of energy and financial resources in the creation of new technologies and industries, and he gets them without any effort, who will invest energy and financial resources to develop them? These two points are the basis of a country’s ability to truly lead in science and technology and come to the forefront of world development.”
Lewis likewise believes that recruiting foreign talent has had minimal effect in improving the overall level of science and technology and innovation: “The bigger problem China faces with technology is that as Xi Jinping tightens his political control, it squeezes the open environment needed for innovation.”
Li Hengqing said that if China wants to truly improve its ability to innovate independently in science and technology, it is not enough to attract overseas talent; the key is to implement complementary political system reforms that will clean up the research environment and also reduce the loss of Chinese scientific and technological talent to overseas.
At present, foreigners in China still face strict residency policies. Foreigners who have worked in China for at least four years and stayed in the country for at least six months each year can apply for permanent residency. However, applicants must earn six times the local average salary and pay taxes legally. According to the South China Morning Post, the average annual salary in Beijing in 2020 is more than RMB 94,000, which means that expats applying for permanent residence must earn at least RMB 560,000 per year.
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