As the United States and China compete for A.I. dominance, China has prioritized recruiting international researchers through new visas and grants, yet foreigners remain reluctant to relocate. A study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reveals that for every 30 Chinese researchers working in the U.S., only one moves to China. Despite tensions, the number of Chinese-origin researchers in the U.S. rose by four percentage points over three years, according to Damien Ma, who led the study.
The research tracked author affiliations at Neur IPS, a leading machine learning conference. While China fails to attract foreign talent, it is retaining more domestic researchers educated locally. In 2022, only six of the top 30 Neur IPS institutions were Chinese; by 2025, that number reached 12, with Peking University and Tsinghua University surpassing U.S. institutions like MIT and Stanford.
Chinese researchers comprised 41% of Neur IPS authors in 2025, compared to 34% from the U.S. The shift reflects growing opportunities in China’s A.I. sector, including companies like Deep Seek and Moonshot. However, the U.S. continues to benefit from established researcher networks and delayed visa restrictions from the Trump administration.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing