Since 1978, about 80 percent of Chinese overseas students have returned to China after finishing their studies, official data said.

According to data from the Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchange (CSCSE), a public organization under the Ministry of Education (MOE), from 1978 (the year reform and opening-up began) to 2015, about 4 million Chinese people studied abroad. As of now, around 1.26 million of them are still doing research or studying abroad, and of the 2.77 million that have finished their studies around 2.2 million have returned to China.

Many of the students who returned cited either their job prospects in China or family concerns as reasons for their return.

Liu, who has a master’s degree from the University of Edinburgh, told the Global Times that "My family and my girlfriend are all in China. Actually, I am fully capable of staying in the UK or going to the US to start my career but I found China has more potential, and another reason is that China is safer than the West."

Fang, who has a doctoral degree from New York University said apart from opportunity and family, a key reason for his return is that "China has good policies for returned overseas students, for instance, people like me are able to become permanent residents of cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and this is an attractive privilege."

Competitive environment

While today’s returnees bring fresh ideas and skills into China, as they have done for decades, the job market encounter is more competitive than it was for their predecessors.

"In the past, returned overseas talents represented ’highly-educated’ and ’high-income,’ but today, returned overseas students are finding it increasingly difficult to get a good job," according to the Blue Paper of the Employment Situation of Chinese Returned Overseas Talents 2016, published by the CSCSE in January. The paper added that the main obstacles include returnees’ limited range in majors, since many hold similar qualifications, and their lack of knowledge about the fast-changing domestic situation.