US fuels brain drain to China with Trump’s anti-science ‘Cultural Revolution’

Political purges, funding cuts and a growing hostility towards expertise have unsettled the US research community, evoking memories among Chinese-Americans of a dark chapter in Chinese history and prompting some to look to China for stability.

The Cultural Revolution, launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 to eliminate “bourgeois” influence and consolidate his power, plunged China into turmoil. Factories and schools were shut down while scholars were denounced and exiled for “re-education”.

The upheaval continued for a decade, crippling China’s science and education sectors as well as its economy, leaving scars that lasted for generations. Chinese-American scientists have independently noted similarities with the United States under President Donald Trump.

In an interview with the South China Morning Post, top mathematician Shing-Tung Yau said a US professor had recently told him that “the American academic community is basically experiencing havoc like China’s Cultural Revolution”.

A number of Chinese-American researchers interviewed by the Post shared the same impression, describing their careers as “chaotic” and the path forward as looking increasingly uncertain.

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Why are more Chinese scientists leaving the US to return to China?

Among them was a biologist, based in the American Midwest, who asked not to be named because he feared retribution. Aged in his late 50s, he said that he had once planned to stay in the US until retirement.

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