SHENZHEN, China – When Stephen Ferguson, a 35-year-old New Yorker, walked into a conference room here in June, he was shocked to find 50 people from China’s top scientific institution eager to hear about his experience working in this southern Chinese city.Ferguson was recruited in 2023 as a biology researcher – despite having only been to China once before – and the delegation from the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences wondered what could be done to make the research environment first-rate.Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe fact they wanted to hear from “some random guy from the U.S.” symbolized something much larger to him: “I feel like I’m in an environment where science is really being promoted – it’s growing, and they’re attracting a lot of talent,” he said. “They are making it easy to say yes.”Ferguson is far from the only American scientist saying yes.Over the past decade, there has been a rush of scholars – many with some family connection to China – moving across the Pacific, drawn by Beijing’s full-throttle drive to become a scientific superpower.But Donald Trump’s return to the White House has turbocharged this effort. The Trump administration has cut billions in science funding, canceled grants for some of America’s most elite universities, revoked international student visas and hiked up costs for highly skilled H-1B visas.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe slashing of science funding, combined with the increased scrutiny scientists of Chinese descent have faced in the United States, has boosted Beijing’s efforts to attract top-tier talent and cement its position as a center of global science.In the first six months of this year alone, about 50 tenure-track scholars of Chinese descent left U.S. universities for China, according to a tally that Princeton University researchers collated by combing through academic databases and publicly available information. This came on top of the more than 850 scholars who have left since 2011.More than 70 percent of these departed scholars work in STEM fields, and the most dramatic shift occurs in engineering and life sciences, the Princeton data shows. Those who’ve moved to Chinese universities this year include a senior biologist at the U.S. …
