ATTRACTING INTERNATIONAL TALENT IS KEY TO CHINA’S LONG-TERM SUCCESS

China should adopt more beneficial measures and strive to create an innovative environment to foster and attract international expertise if it wants to be known as the “innovation destination”, a top expert on talent research says.

“To realize its goal of becoming the world’s leading research and development center, the core enabler should be an attractive talent acquisition strategy,” says Wang Huiyao, director general of the Center for China and Globalization, and chairman of the newly-established China Global Talent Society.

Wang says the research and development industry is largely reliant on innovative technology and ideas generated by the fresh talent for breakthroughs in industry and society.

“Space scientist Qian Xuesen helped develop China’s nuclear capabilities and rocket launching technology, thereby paving the way for several historic achievements. Similarly, Li Siguang, a geologist, helped discover many oil fields in China and made several contributions to the oil industry,” he says.

China has often expressed its desire to create an innovative society by 2020, with research and development accounting for 2.5 percent of the overall GDP. It has also set the goal of transforming itself from being “labor-rich’’ to “talent-intensive”, and has envisaged a talent pool of 180 million people by 2020, compared with 120 million now.

Wang, who has participated in many talent research programs for the Chinese government, says that during the past few years, central and provincial governments have realized the importance of talent building and have taken several steps to attract experts through preferential policies.

The Thousand Talents Program launched in 2008 has attracted more than 3,300 high-quality professionals from abroad to China’s key areas, while the Recruitment Program of Foreign Experts launched in August 2011 has attracted more than 100, according to the Center for China and Globalization. Tens of thousands of Chinese students studying overseas have also been attracted back.

However, the number of top talents that China has is still far from enough.

“Though China is a big auto giant, it has very few experts in engine development,” says Wang. “This is also the case with several other industries.”

Wang says that though China has a great base of people, with 7 million fresh college graduates every year, their overall capabilities are still not top notch. Of the 1.6 million science and engineering graduates that pass out every year in China, only 10 percent match up to the requirements of international companies, says a report published by global consulting

firm McKinsey.

The real problem in China is the high erosion rate of top talent, experts say. It is the highest in the world, with 87 percent of those in the science and engineering field who go overseas to study failing to return.

“If people with creativity and innovation abilities are not in China, it will be a major obstacle for developing the R&D industry and the eventual transformation toward an innovative society,” Wang says.

Although China has increased the inputs for the R&D industry by attracting top talent, its innovation capabilities still lag behind that of Western countries.

Wang says that China needs three kinds of talent for the transition to an innovative society. The first is top professionals who have creative ideas or research methods that can be developed as new technology.

The second type is organizational management, who can invent new forms of organization and find new ways of management, which could also help promote innovation in other fields.

The third kind is entrepreneurial talent, who are able to connect the new technology with the market, convert new ideas into new products, and deliver them to consumers.

“We cannot make our economy grow by only researching some advanced technologies, such as space exploration,” Wang says. “An important part of the transformation is to convert R&D into real products.”

At present, the conversion rate of technology into products is very low in China, compared with their Western counterparts.

“In the West, it’s common that university professors have some creative ideas or new research, which can be used for making products,” he says, adding that the conversion rate is often high.

“But in China, researchers seem disconnected to the market most of the time,” he says. “Many professors or researchers conduct research, write papers and publish them, but their theories or concepts are never put to practical use. Many companies also do not put much effort into innovation or the cultivation of technicians.

Even the big Chinese companies are lagging in this aspect.”

Wang says that there are some best practices that China can learn and adopt from Western nations. Prominent among them is to create a social and academic environment for innovation, to encourage creative minds and strengthen protection of creative results.

“Traditional Chinese culture emphasizes obedience and unity. So instead of cultivating creative minds, many students have been told to follow conventional standards,” he says.

Wang says that the government should improve its education concept to encourage more people to be curious and happy to try different things. Moreover, the country should also improve its IPR protection on new discoveries in the academic field and by companies. Currently, many of these ideas can be easily and quickly copied without severe punishment.

“In the West, the punishment for IPR infringement can be very serious.

China should strengthen its IPR protection to reassure the developers.”

International talent flows between China and other countries is another important lesson that China should learn, he says.

Wang cites the example of Israel, which has 4,000 professors in the country and 4,000 outside the country.

This has helped Israel get connected with the rest of the world on matters relating to science and technology, and communications.

“Innovation needs an amalgam of different ideas and cultures. Communicating and working together with international talent will help broaden the technologies and horizon,”

he says.

Wang says that currently this kind of talent flow on the Chinese mainland is quite limited.

“In our best universities such as Tsinghua University and Peking University, international professors only account for very small percentage of the total, while in many universities outside the mainland, this number is quite high, such as in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where the number is around 85 percent,” he says.

In the US, overseas students account for about 10 percent of the total, but in China, overseas students’ taking degree programs only account for 0.4 percent, one of the lowest in the world.

“Without talent flows and idea exchange, there won’t be any innovation,”

he says, adding that China should strengthen communication and cooperation, send more professors overseas and bring in more overseas professors and students.

Wang says that the government has been opening up policies to attract more talent and enable talent flows, such as the talent visa policy, but the bar should be lowered further, as the entry thresholds are still too high.

“The US grants about 1 million green cards and almost 100,000 H1B working visas every year, but China has issued only 5,000 green cards in the past decade,” he says. “China should learn from other countries by adopting more open policies for global talent development.”