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The libertarian Cato institute points out that the US has been losing international scientists in recent years whereas not only has China gained but so has "non-US OECD" countries. The latter is code for Europe and AU/NZ/CA.
The immediate cause is probably the misguided and arguably racist "China initiative" which essentially led to a witch-hunt against ethnic Chinese people. But I suspect domestic factors in China and Europe are also responsible. Both have been ramping up R&D spending in recent years and visa policies in Europe are often more favorable for researchers than American policies are. Easier to get and easier to stay.
It is no exaggeration to say that most of STEM innovation in US academia is now being carried out by foreign-born people. So this development should worry Americans. I also think many people in the West underestimate how much genuine innovation there is in China. Viewing data from the Nature Index, which tracks elite science production, it isn't clear that China is far behind anymore. If at all. In areas like EV batteries, China is now ahead of the West. Progress in their semiconductor industry has been faster than even many insiders had expected.
I still think the US has a series of unique advantages over its competitors, but falling prey to scare-mongering campaigns and McCarthyite tactics isn't going to capitalise on them.
If I am a scientist that has an option to work in China or in the US, what would be my incentive for the US? I guess money can be an incentive, but China could match that if they wanted now, they're not poor anymore. Living in a free country and not being subject to the whim of the oppressive fascist regime and having to censor one's speech and scientific inquiry constantly - could be a huge factor. And there was time where the US held a huge advantage on that. But combined air of suspicion (may be in some small part even justified) towards Chinese-born scientists and widely-publicized cases of wrongful prosecution, with the general air of ideological conformity (of a different kind, but similar fervor) in the academia in general, where liking a wrong tweet could get you hunted by the mobs and fired from your job - makes one question, how big is the difference now? Sure, there is some, you won't be jailed yet for saying men can't get pregnant (though many members of Congress are already writing "hate speech" laws which would make it happen), but you can very well be made unable to work as a scientist - the distance is decreasing rapidly, and with increased politicizing of science, one may reasonably conclude that the choice is not between freedom and political control anymore, but between two forms of political control. So, if the US is no longer the shining beacon of freedom on the hill, it comes back to who could offer more. And I imagine, to some people China would be willing to offer more.
I'm a scientist working in the US and I got one of these offers to work in China for a ton of money and family and school support. I didn't even consider it except to laugh about it with friends and family.
China sucks, up and down. I am convinced that the people who think that life in China is in anyway as good as life in the US are too young or too poor to know what high quality life in the US is like. My quality of life in China would be so much worse than my quality of life in the US even with all these financial and status inducements. The food sucks. The housing sucks. The culture sucks. Frankly, the people suck too. The best stuff is a bad imitation of western culture. Westerners that go to Shanghai and think its bright and shiny honestly have peasant taste or have never experienced the actual high-quality things that New York has to offer. And despite all the kvetching on here about increased politicalizing of science, soft limits on free speech, and so on, this is basically all negligible and only noticeable because the baseline is so good. I teach at a big progressive university and "cancelling" is basically made up and not something that actually happens, and when it does, the administration clamps down on it hard and the cancellers shut up.
The on-the-ground reality in China, that I hear from Chinese colleagues, is factually and materially a million times worse. This million talents thing, or whatever the latest version is called, is an absurd joke that only attracts the very worst scientists and academics working in the US. You might not know this from pure numbers, but when you look at the mature researchers who go, or the PhD students who go, we are not, as they say, sending our best.
This isn't just US chauvinism, I would 100% consider a similar offer in Korea or Japan or the UK or France or even Hong Kong 10 years ago. China is just uniquely bad in ways I find almost impossible to overstate.
I think the truth is somewhere in between.
There are unique advantages and drawbacks to both, but if you are a credible and accredited scientist working in a high-value field such as medicine or AI, I would say the US still offers more money and opportunities. Quality of life is, in both countries, exceptionally dependent on where you go. There are places in both the US and China that I would not want to ever visit, or even pass by, without a heavily armed personal escort that would suffer no repercussions for shooting bystanders.
People is a tossup. I think in America the variance is higher, it's a culture and society that says one thing and does another and lionizes exceptionalism of all sorts. China tends to squash everyone down into the same paste by design.
Food is again, exceptionally dependent on where you go.
I definitely do think the attitude towards foreigners has gotten significantly worse in China over the last decade and a half. 2013 China and 2023 China are, for foreigners, quite different.
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