As Chinese companies spend billions of dollars buying overseas rivals and their technology, investors from the country are enticing China-born tech executives and scientists back home to launch start-ups of their own.
Private and state-backed investors in China have set up venture capital funds to target executives and senior researchers at companies such as Google, Apple, Airbnb and Facebook, betting on the rapid development of the domestic tech sector to produce high returns on the investments. Other initiatives include a programme set up by China’s Communist party that focuses on Chinese graduates and academics at foreign universities.
“They recognise that the economy needs to shift to higher-quality production,” said Shan Guangcun, a machine-learning specialist who recently received state funding to return to China from Germany. “So they need talent to come back from overseas, and they are willing to pay for it.”