Many Overseas Chinese Researchers Find Coming Home a Revelation

SHANGHAI—” When I left China to study abroad, I thought I had left China for good,” says neuroscientist Shigang He. Yet, after earning his Ph.D. and landing a permanent research position in Australia, He started having second thoughts. A visit to a Chinese institute astounded him. Labs were bulging with new equipment and feverish with activity. And funding for individual researchers was nearly on a par with his in Australia. He made several trips back to China, he says, “to make sure I wasn't deluded.” Then he did something once unthinkable for a Chinese scientist established abroad: He resigned from the University of Queensland, sold his house in Brisbane, and joined the Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai, a part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).