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US-China relations
ChinaDiplomacy

Openness needed for Xi Jinping’s goal to bring 50,000 young Americans to China: talent expert

  • To realise Xi Jinping’s vision, Beijing must create ‘an atmosphere that says to these young people you’re welcome here’, says talent retention expert David Zweig
  • China still has a great need for global talent, according to CCG founder and president Wang Huiyao

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President Xi Jinping said in November China hoped to welcome 50,000 young Americans over the next five years on exchange and study programmes. Photo: AP
Orange Wang

Beijing should create an atmosphere of openness if it wants to attract many more young Americans to the country, according to a veteran expert on China’s talent recruitment and retention efforts.

David Zweig, professor emeritus of the social science division at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said China’s plan to have 50,000 young Americans go to China over the next five years, was a “good goal” but also would be a “challenge”.

“It’s important that China creates an atmosphere that says to these young people you’re welcome here – to come, study and get a job – and that China is open for business to the foreign companies,” he said on Thursday during a seminar at the Centre for China and Globalisation (CCG), a Beijing-based non-governmental think tank.

Zweig said students, like him, who went to study in China before the country’s opening up to the outside world saw that “times were pretty tough” then and there had been great changes since that time.

“That whole group of people knows the changes that have happened and we support an open China. Our commitment is to an open China that engages with the world and our own governments engaging with China. That’s what we support.”

Addressing a dinner with US business leaders in San Francisco in November, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China was ready to invite 50,000 young Americans to China for exchanges and studies in the next five years.
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