China's Top Tech Talent Is Heading Back Home --- Those who return after working here, called 'sea turtles,' are fueling efforts to take on Silicon Valley

“When Meta Platforms said in April that it would lay off 10% of its staff, Allen Sun quickly booked a trip to Menlo Park, Calif.

 

It was a prime opportunity. Sun, a Beijing-based headhunter for some of the biggest Chinese tech companies, works to lure China-born talent back home, targeting people at U.S.-based companies such as Meta, Google, Anthropic and Amazon. Some clients are authorizing him to promise salaries that match or exceed the workers' Silicon Valley pay -- a windfall given China's lower cost of living.

 

"The compensation is very competitive," said Sun.

 

For decades, making it in the U.S. was the ultimate sign of success for China's best and brightest. Now, many of them are coming home -- and the reverse brain drain is fueling Beijing's efforts to edge out the U.S. in artificial intelligence, robotics and medical research.

 

There is an unprecedented jostling for AI talent among the richest companies and global superpowers that has skyrocketed tech researchers to NBA and Hollywood levels of wealth and spurred a cutthroat recruitment blitz across the industry. It's not just American CEOs attempting to entice researchers with lavish job offers.

 

(Meta's Mark Zuckerberg was dangling $100 million pay packages last year.)

 

Recent examples of high-profile AI talent poached by top Chinese tech companies include Wu Yonghui, a former vice president of research at Google who helped develop Gemini and now heads research for TikTok-parent ByteDance's AI arm, and Yao Shunyu, a former OpenAI researcher who was named Tencent Holdings' chief AI scientist.

 

There's a longstanding name within China for those going back home -- "sea turtles," a pun on the Mandarin term for overseas returnees, haigui, that also evokes female sea turtles' instinct to return to their natal beach after years of migrating around the world's oceans.

 

But the trend as it relates to top tech talent today has implications for American economic competitiveness, both now and in the future. The number of recent Chinese graduates returning home to seek jobs grew 12% in 2025 from the previous year, and the figure has more than doubled since 2018, according to a report by Chinese recruiting platform Zhaopin.

 

Once known more as a technology copycat than as an innovator, China now offers returnees a chance to work in cutting-edge industries. National and local governments dangle perks such as housing subsidies and startup funding. The shift also comes as some Chinese feel less welcome in the U.S. owing to worsening U.S.-China relations and tightening immigration policy. Returnees said they felt it was harder to advance to leadership roles in the workplace being Chinese in the U.S. In some cases, returnees were motivated by the promise of more professional freedom.

 

Zhang Kai is a star researcher who works to visualize the inside of cells down to the near-atomic level, an area of high interest for pharmaceutical companies. Earlier this year, he left a professorship at Yale for the state-run University of Science and Technology of China.

 

Zhang said it was becoming harder for Chinese researchers to lead ambitious projects in the U.S., and that the political environment was getting tougher, citing the example of a Chinese Ph.D. student working with him who was restricted from entering the country during the first Trump administration. "Invisible restrictions exist," he said in an email. "While I don't intend to frame this as a lofty nationalist gesture, Trump's actions over the years actually made me 'more patriotic.'"

 

Jeff Li felt pigeonholed in his job in the U.S. After graduating from New York University with a master's degree in computer science, he had to work in the field in order to stay in the States. He felt like U.S. companies tended to hire Chinese workers for engineering jobs, but he was interested in exploring a role in product management.

 

He landed a job at Microsoft and moved to the Seattle area in 2018. It was his first time living in the suburbs, where it was pitch-black at night and he needed to drive 15 minutes to buy anything. He felt the "Seattle freeze" -- what West Coasters refer to as the city's reputation for being a difficult place to make friends.

 

As an H-1B visa holder, he felt nervous leaving the U.S., fearing he would not be able to get back in.

 

He decided to move back to Beijing at the end of 2021 to work at a leading Chinese tech company. Going home had its own downsides. The country is notorious for its "996" work culture: working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. He had to get used to living in a big city again, where strangers pressed up against him on a crowded subway.

 

But his quality of life felt better. He could order food delivery from an app anytime, anywhere. He didn't have to worry about renewing his visa.

 

Now, Li is building AI agent products for a startup. His friends back in the U.S. have gotten green cards and bought houses, but don't have much flexibility in their career paths. Li said he felt more unrestrained.

 

"Even though the U.S. has many broader advantages, as a Chinese person, China is my home turf," he said.

 

Many Chinese professionals continue to build careers in the U.S. Four out of five among 6,700 Chinese nationals receiving a research doctorate from a U.S. academic institution from July 2023 to June 2024 indicated an intention to stay in the U.S. rather than return home, according to the latest annual census of the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.

 

And U.S. companies still generally offer much higher pay and better work-life balance than Chinese competitors. America remains the world leader in AI models and other cutting-edge technologies. Many Chinese professionals have settled down in the U.S. and are raising families, making it hard to uproot their lives.

 

But the Chinese government is working to ease homecoming pains.

 

Shenzhen, a tech hub in southern China, is advertising tax breaks and the equivalent of more than $700,000 in subsidies for qualified overseas returnees. Shanghai's Pudong District is offering up to roughly $14.7 million in project funding for top young talent in science and technology.

 

Another district in Shanghai has a program targeting Ph.D. holders who have held senior positions in companies abroad, as well as people under 40 with experience overseas. Those who make the cut are eligible for a living allowance of up to nearly $300,000 and startups can receive free or low-cost office space.

 

Some recruits help Chinese companies expand to other countries, using their knowledge of languages and local work cultures, said Zak Dychtwald, who runs Bridgeworks Global, a Shanghai-based consulting firm that works with multinational companies. "Chinese companies need people who understand global markets and understand global management," Dychtwald said.

 

Recruiting efforts extend to students who have not yet embarked on a career path. China's Education Ministry in 2022 established a recruitment platform for students returning from abroad, and leading tech companies such as Huawei and Tencent have early-career programs for overseas students. Last year, 535,600 students returned to China from overseas, up from 415,600 in 2023, according to China's Education Ministry.

 

A LinkedIn survey of more than 1,000 overseas Chinese Ph.D. students last year found that 59% planned to return to China after graduating, up from 38% in 2024.

 

The number of people from China living in the U.S. on visas for purposes such as education and work, including H-1Bs, has fallen each year from fiscal year 2022 to 2024, according to Homeland Security Department data.

 

In part, that is because H-1B visas, the main pathway for highly skilled foreign professionals to work in the U.S., have become a political flashpoint in the U.S., especially within the MAGA movement, with critics saying the program allows tech companies to hire foreign workers for cheap instead of Americans. The Trump administration has added a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas and is proposing higher wage requirements.

 

For those Chinese who go back home, the reason isn't always politics or money. One bioengineering Ph.D. graduate worried about gun violence. An AI scholar felt he was discriminated against due to his race, while he was shut out of programs for underrepresented minorities. A pharmaceutical researcher said he wanted to be closer to his aging parents.

 

Lu Wuyuan, a scientist, moved to Shanghai in 2020 after three decades in the U.S. When he first arrived in 1990 to study at Purdue University, he felt like he was in a movie. Driving along I-65 from Indianapolis to West Lafayette, he passed by idyllic farmland and gentle rolling hills.

 

He became an American citizen and raised two sons in the U.S. As a tenured professor at the University of Maryland, he studied cancer, HIV and other infectious diseases.

 

Then, under the first Trump administration, the U.S. government began scrutinizing academics' ties with China, concerned about national security. In 2018, Lu became one of hundreds of scientists investigated by the National Institutes of Health over alleged undisclosed ties with China. Lu said Maryland knew about and encouraged his collaborations with Chinese universities, so he thought the NIH inquiry would pass quickly.

 

The investigation dragged on. By 2020, Lu had enough. He quit and moved to Shanghai to join the faculty of Fudan University, a prestigious school that had been trying to recruit him for years. At Fudan, Lu has continued to research infectious diseases, recently patenting technology for an improved Covid-19 antiviral, which was licensed by an American company.

 

"When China is ascending to become a global power, that makes your choice much easier," he said.” [1]

 

1. EXCHANGE --- China's Top Tech Talent Is Heading Back Home --- Those who return after working here, called 'sea turtles,' are fueling efforts to take on Silicon Valley. Miao, Hannah; Emont, Jon.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 16 May 2026: B1.