在與美國的競爭中，中國難以吸引外國人工智能研究人員

 Recently The New York Times reported the following:

In Race with U.S., China Struggles to Recruit Foreign A.I. Researchers

China’s booming artificial intelligence sector has given local researchers good reason to remain in the country, but it has yet to lure overseas scientists despite a government push.

The NYT - By Zeyi Yang

Oct. 6, 2026

As the United States and China vie for A.I. dominance, the Trump administration has made it more difficult for companies to hire foreign researchers, while China has made recruiting the world’s best scientists a national priority.

Over the past two years, China has flung open its doors to international researchers, introducing a visa for scientists and offering lucrative research grants.

Despite those efforts, foreigners are not coming.

Worse still for China’s ambitions, the number of Chinese scientists working in the United States has risen rather than declined, according to a new study about global A.I. research. 

For every 30 Chinese researchers in the United States working on artificial intelligence in 2025, only one in China made the opposite journey, according to the study, conducted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank.

“Despite U.S.-China tensions, the number of Chinese-origin researchers working in the U.S. actually rose by four percentage points rather than declined” compared with three years ago, said Damien Ma, who led the study.

The study determined the flow of scientists around the world by examining research papers accepted by last year’s NeurIPS, an academic conference focused on machine learning and computational neuroscience. Mr. Ma and his team analyzed where the papers’ authors went to college, received graduate degrees and ended up working.

The results affirm the popular understanding that the United States and China are the two places where most frontier A.I. research is being produced. While China is failing to recruit foreign researchers, the study found, it is seeing a boon in retaining local talent, people who have risen though the domestic education system and are increasingly choosing not to seek work overseas. The United States, on the other hand, maintains its lead by employing foreign researchers, many of whom previously emigrated from China, as well as India, South Korea and elsewhere.

The Carnegie study counts those researchers who migrated from one country to another, but it does not indicate when a researcher moved. One explanation for why the number of Chinese scientists working in America remains high is that they arrived before the Trump administration imposed restrictions on obtaining visas and cut research funding last year.

“There is a delay effect — the researchers in this study mostly made their decisions years ago to study or work here,” said Yingyi Ma, a sociology professor at Syracuse University who studies Asian students in the United States. “The danger for the U.S. is a slow erosion of its appeal to attract talent that compounds over decades. By the time the effect shows up in the data, it is hard to reverse.”

For years, Chinese scientists and their peers from around the world were drawn to the United States, which offered career opportunities at start-ups and ample academic funding. But China has gained significant ground in recent years as an alternative for A.I. researchers.

In 2022, only six of the top 30 institutions publishing papers at NeurIPS were based in China; in 2025, that number rose to 12. Peking University and Tsinghua University, two of China’s top academic institutions, sat at the top of the chart, eclipsing American heavyweights like M.I.T., Stanford and Carnegie Mellon. Chinese researchers also made up 41 percent of the published authors at NeurIPS last year, eclipsing U.S. researchers, who stood at 34 percent.

Today, China has an abundance of workplaces for A.I. researchers, including well-funded universities, big tech companies and start-ups, said Kevin Xu, the founder of Interconnected Capital, a hedge fund that invests in A.I. technologies. As Chinese companies like DeepSeek and Moonshot repeatedly make names for themselves on the global stage, they also become more attractive to top talent.

“The fact that being able to work at DeepSeek gives you just as much professional prestige and future success as working at OpenAI is quite different from what we’ve observed five years ago, when the path was between working at Google versus Tencent,” Mr. Xu said.

The ascendancy of Chinese companies might explain why a vast majority of Chinese A.I. researchers choose to remain in the country. But, Mr. Xu added, there’s another reason some researchers remain in China: The government is unwilling to let them go.

This year, the Chinese government restricted the two founders of Manus, an A.I. start-up that was set to be acquired by Meta for $2 billion, from leaving the country. Since then, travel by Chinese A.I. entrepreneurs and researchers — as well as by their spouses and children — has been further curtailed, according to a recent Bloomberg report.

While China is struggling to recruit foreign talent, it has made some gains in its effort to encourage Chinese researchers and executives abroad  to return.

The Chinese tech giant Tencent last year appointed Yao Shunyu, a former OpenAI researcher, as its chief A.I. scientist. The move was seen as one of the most notable examples of an A.I. researcher returning to China after having studied and worked in the West.

Despite China’s new offers of visas and grant money, Silicon Valley still provides more attractive offers and investment opportunities than China for American researchers. Also, moving to a country with few immigrants and a different language is always going to be a challenge.

“For everybody else who’s outside the walled garden, culturally or digitally, it’s still very hard to break into,” Mr. Xu said.

Translation

在與美國的競爭中，中國難以吸引外國人工智能研究人員

中國蓬勃發展的人工智能產業讓本土研究人員有充分的理由留在國內，但儘管政府大力推動，仍未能吸引海外科學家

隨著中美兩國在人工智能領域展開激烈競爭，特朗普政府加大了企業聘用外國研究人員的難度，而中國則將招募全球頂尖科學家列為國家優先事項。

過去兩年，中國向國際研究人員敞開了大門，推出了科學家簽證，並提供豐厚的研究經費。

儘管如此，外國人仍然沒有來。

更糟的是，一項關於全球人工智能研究的新研究表明，在美國工作的中國科學家人數不降反升。

卡內基國際和平基金會（一家智庫）進行的一項研究顯示，在2025年在美国，從事人工智能研究的中国研究人员每增加30人，在中国，做出了相反選擇 [即前往中国從事人工智能研究] 的就只有1人。

該研究的負責人 Damien Ma 表示：“儘管中美關係緊張，但與三年前相比，在美國工作的華裔研究人員數量實際上增加了4個百分點，而不是下降。”

這項研究透過分析去年 NeurIPS（專注於機器學習和計算神經科學的學術會議）接收的研究論文，來確定全球科學家的流動情況。Ma及其團隊分析了論文作者的大學、研究生學位和最終工作地點。

研究結果證實了人們普遍的看法，即美國和中國是人工智能前沿研究的主要產地。研究發現，儘管中國在吸引外國研究人員方面進展緩慢，但卻在留住本土人才方面取得了顯著成效。這些人才大多透過國內教育體系脫穎而出，並且越來越傾向於留在國內工作，而不是出國謀生。另一方面，美國則透過聘用外國研究人員保持領先地位，其中許多人先前來自中國，以及印度、韓國和其他國家。

卡內基研究所的這項研究統計了從一個國家移居到另一個國家的研究人員，但並未指出研究人員移居的具體時間。中國科學家在美國工作的數量仍然居高不下的一個解釋是，他們在特朗普政府去年實施簽證限制和削減科研經費之前就已經抵達美國。

Syracuse大學研究在美國亞裔學生的社會學教授 Yingyi Ma 表示: 「這存在滯後效應 - 這項研究中的研究人員大多在幾年前就決定來美國學習或工作」，「美國面臨的危險在於，其吸引人才的吸引力正在緩慢下降，這種下降會持續數十年。等到這種影響在數據中顯現出來時，就很難逆轉了」。

多年來，中國科學家和世界各地的同行都被美國吸引，因為美國提供了新創公司的職業機會和充足的學術經費。但近年來，中國作為人工智能研究人員的另一選擇，已經取得了顯著進展。

2022年，在 NeurIPS 會議上發表論文排名前30的機構中，只有6家位於中國；到2025年，這一數字上升至12家。北京大學和清華大學這兩所中國頂尖學府位居榜首，超越了麻省理工學院、史丹佛大學和卡內基美隆大學等美國學術強校。去年，中國研究人員在 NeurIPS 會議的論文作者中佔比高達41%，超過了佔34%的美國研究人員。

專注於人工智能投資的對沖基金 Interconnected Capital 的創始人 Kevin Xu 表示如今，中國為人工智能研究人員提供了大量的工作場所，包括資金雄厚的大學、大型科技公司和新創公司。隨著 DeepSeek 和 Moonshot 等中國公司在國際舞台上不斷嶄露頭角，它們對頂尖人才的吸引力也日益增強。

Xu表示： “如今，在 DeepSeek 工作與在 OpenAI 工作一樣，都能獲得同樣的職業聲望和未來成功，這與我們五年前觀察到的情況截然不同。當時，人們的選擇往往是在谷歌和騰訊之間做出抉擇。”

中國公司的崛起或許可以解釋為什麼絕大多數中國人工智能研究人員選擇留在國內。但Xu補充道，有些研究人員留在中國還有另一個原因：政府不願意放他們離開。

今年，中國政府限制了人工智能新創公司Manus的兩名創辦人離境。 Manus 原本計劃被 Meta 以20億美元收購。根據彭博社最近的一篇報道，此後，中國人工智能企業家和研究人員及其配偶和子女的出行進一步受到限制。

儘管中國在吸引外籍人才方面面臨挑戰，但在鼓勵海外中國研究人員和高階主管回國方面已取得一些進展。

去年，中國科技巨頭騰訊任命前 OpenAI 研究員 Yao Shunyu 為首席人工智能科學家。此舉被視為人工智能研究人員在西方學習和工作後回國的最顯著案例之一。

儘管中國提供了新的簽證和資助，但對美國研究人員而言，矽谷仍然比中國更具吸引力，提供更多投資機會。此外，移居到一個有較少移民且語言不同的國家始終充滿挑戰。

Xu說: 「對於身處『封閉式花園』之外的所有人來說，無論是在文化上還是在數位領域，想要融入其中仍然非常困難」。

So, China has made recruiting the world’s best scientists a national priority. Over the past two years, China has open its doors to international researchers, introducing a visa for scientists and offering huge research grants. Despite those efforts, foreigners are not coming. It seems that for American researchers, Silicon Valley still provides more attractive offers and investment opportunities than China. Apparently, moving to a country with few immigrants and a different language will always be a challenge.