Between 2010 and 2021, nearly 20,000 Chinese-born scientists left the United States, a trend that accelerated after 2018. These are not second-string researchers: they include figures like neuroscientist Yan Ning, who left Princeton to lead the Shenzhen Medical Academy, and Gang Chen, a top MIT engineer who returned to Tsinghua University after being cleared of espionage-related charges.
Increasingly under Trump, restrictive visa policies, geopolitics and racialized suspicion are repelling rather than attracting top talent. The previous Trump administration’s China Initiative may be over, but its chilling effect remains.