The US's Reverse Brain Drain Will Benefit China, India

Filed in archive Asia on October 26, 2009

Vinod Wadhwa had a insightful and informative piece in TechCrunch recently on what he called reverse brain drain. Large numbers of Chinese and Indians in the tech sector are going home - to Shanghai and Mumbai, Beijing and Delhi.

Why would such talented people voluntarily leave Silicon Valley, a place that remains the hottest hotbed of technology innovation on Earth? Or to leave other promising locales such as New York City, Boston and the Research Triangle area of North Carolina? ...What we found should concern even the most boisterous Silicon Valley boosters.

We learned that these workers returned in their prime: the average age of the Indian returnees was 30 and the Chinese was 33. They were really well educated: 51% of the Chinese held masters degrees and 41% had PhDs. Among Indians, 66% held a masters and 12% had PhDs.

It's hard to see this as anything other than bad for the US and good for China and India (and for entrepreneurs doing business in China and India).