They attended the best universities in China and the West. They lived middle-class lives in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, working for technology companies at the center of China’s tech rivalry with the United States.
They now live and work in North America, Europe, Japan, Australia – and almost every developed country.
Chinese people – from young people to entrepreneurs – vote with their feet to escape political repression, bleak economic prospects and often grueling work cultures. The exodus increasingly includes technology professionals and other well-educated middle-class Chinese.
“I left China because I didn’t like the social and political environment,” said Chen Liangshi, 36, who worked on artificial intelligence projects at Baidu and Alibaba, two of China’s largest technology companies, before leaving the country in early 2020 The decision came after China abolished presidential term limits in 2018, a move that allowed its supreme leader Xi Jinping to remain in power indefinitely.
“I will not return to China until it becomes democratic,” he said, “and people can live without fear.” Today he works for Meta in London.
I interviewed 14 Chinese professionals, including Mr. Chen, and exchanged messages with dozens more about why they decided to turn their lives upside down and how they started over abroad. Most of them worked in the Chinese tech industry, which was surprising given the high pay.
What surprised me most, however, was that most of them had moved to countries other than the United States. China is facing a brain drain, and the United States is not taking advantage of it.
In the 1980s and 1990s, when China was poor, its best and brightest sought to study, work — and stay — in the West. According to the United Nations, net emigration peaked in 1992, when more than 870,000 people left the country. That number fell to a low of around 125,000 in 2012 as China emerged from poverty and emerged as a tech power and the world’s second-largest economy.
The Chinese government has worked hard to retain them by creating incentives to lure back scientists and other professionals. According to the Ministry of Education, more than 80 percent of Chinese who studied abroad returned home in 2016, up from about a quarter two decades earlier.
The trend has reversed. According to the UN, more than 310,000 Chinese emigrated online in 2022 despite passport and travel restrictions. Three months before the start of this year, the number has reached the same level as in all of 2022.
A number of people I interviewed said, like Mr. Chen, that they had considered leaving the country after China changed its constitution to allow Mr. Xi to effectively rule for life. The “zero Covid” campaign, with almost three years of constant lockdowns, mass testing and quarantines, was the final straw for many of them.
Most people I interviewed asked me to use only their family names for fear of government retaliation.
One of them, Mr. Fu, was working as an engineer at a state-owned defense technology company in southwest China when he decided to leave the country. He found that after the constitutional amendment, he and his colleagues spent more time attending policy study sessions than working, forcing everyone to work overtime.
As Mr. Xi became increasingly dominated by fear and propaganda, the social and political atmosphere became tense and oppressive. Mr. Fu said he became estranged from his parents after arguing about the need for the strict pandemic restrictions, which he objected to. He hardly spoke to anyone and lived in political isolation. At the end of last year, he resigned and applied for a work visa in Canada. Now he and his wife are on their way to Calgary, Alberta.
Most expats I spoke with explained why they didn’t choose the United States, citing America’s complicated and unpredictable process for applying for visas and permanent residency status.
The number of student visas issued by the U.S. to Chinese nationals, long a starting point for promising future expatriates, began declining in 2016 as relations between the countries deteriorated. In the first six months of 2023, Britain issued more than 100,000 study visas to Chinese nationals, while the United States issued around 65,000 F1 student visas.
Mr. Fu said he hadn’t considered the U.S. because he studied at a university on Washington’s sanctions list and because he worked at a defense contractor – both of which could make it difficult for him to pass the U.S. government’s security clearance process to pass. But he said he would eventually like to work in the country he idolizes.
Some tech experts have chosen Canada and European countries over the United States because of their better benefits, work-life balance and gun control laws.
When Ms. Zhang decided to emigrate in July 2022, she made a list: Canada, New Zealand, Germany and Nordic countries. The US didn’t make it because she knew it would be extremely difficult for her to get a work visa.
Ms. Zhang, 27, a computer programmer, felt Silicon Valley’s hectic culture was too similar to China’s stressful work environment. After five years of putting in long hours at a top tech company in Shenzhen, she was done. She also looked for a country where women would be treated more equally. This year she moved to Norway. After paying taxes for three years and passing the language test, she receives a permanent residence permit.
Ms. Zhang said she doesn’t mind that she earns about $20,000 less than in Shenzhen and pays higher taxes and living costs. She can end her day at 4pm and enjoy life outside of work. She doesn’t worry that at 35 she will be considered too old for a job – a form of discrimination that many Chinese experience. She does not live in constant fear that the government will introduce a policy like “Zero Covid” that will turn her life upside down.
Most tech professionals I spoke to took a pay cut when they moved. “I feel like I’m paying for freedom,” said Mr. Zhou, a U.S.-trained software engineer who quit his job at an autonomous driving startup in Beijing. Today he works for an automobile company in Western Europe. “It’s worth it,” he said.
Another expatriate, Mr. Zhao, described his long and troubling journey to the United States.
He grew up in a poor village in eastern China’s Shandong Province and came to the United States five years ago to study for a doctorate in engineering. Initially, he wanted to return this year after graduating – in his opinion, China was on the upswing, unlike America.
But China’s response to the pandemic caused Mr. Zhao to question his beliefs.
“I cannot return to a country where everything is built on lies,” he said.
But it won’t be easy to stay in the United States. Mr. Zhao has a job offer and will receive temporary employment status as a STEM (science or engineering) graduate. That will take three years. He will enter a lottery for an H-1B work visa. He did the math: The probability that he won’t win the lottery after three years is 40 percent. He may have to go back to school to stay in the United States or ask his company to transfer him to an overseas position.
“When I think about it at night, I sometimes feel that life is full of misery and uncertainty,” Mr. Zhao said. “Then I can’t sleep.”