Beijing briefing: The problem with China’s brain gain

Western suspicions and high salaries are encouraging Chinese science talent back home – but Beijing’s isolationism is not helping the cause, writes Yu Jie.

The World Today Published 29 September 2023 3 minute READ

Like millions of others, I very much enjoyed Christopher Nolan’s latest film Oppenheimer, not only for its brilliant portrayal of the father of the atomic bomb but for its mirroring of the current tech war between China and the United States.

Robert Oppenheimer, accused of harbouring communist sympathies, was stripped of his security clearance in 1954 despite having led the Manhattan Project that developed the first nuclear weapons.

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