Follow-ups to my earlier question about the ChiComs keeping their best brains at home.

Reader A:

There is simply no way that this is true, at least not at the graduate level. I worked … at a top research institute in Beijing last year. The Institute was part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and also granted Master’s and Doctor’s degrees. Several of the Master’s students I was friends with applied to American universities to continue on for a PhD. This was done with the encouragement, or at least support, of the faculty there. I also knew or heard about students who had completed their PhD who went to the US or Europe for post-docs. After getting accepted somewhere, the biggest problem was getting US visas (though this appeared not to be that difficult). I never heard anyone complain at all about having trouble getting out of China.
I had other friends who went directly from undergrad in China to a Master’s degree in the UK, including one with an undergrad degree from Beijing University who was in medical school at the top Chinese hospital for respiratory-stuff in Chengdu.
On the undergrad-level, the Chinese students at go abroad are the ones whose parents have enough money to pay for it. There might be an effect here that makes it look like China sends poor students abroad though. If you get into a tip-top school in Beijing or Shanghai, you’d probably go there. But if you failed the university entrance exam and your parents had money, you would have to go to school abroad or wait a year to re-take the exam. It’s not even plausible that the Chinese government would pay for second or third tier students to study abroad.

Reader B:

I think the ChiComs might … practice a policy of making us think that they keep the best and brightest home in China, to make us believe that they are much smarter than they are.

[Me] That would be a neat bluff. But then Dr. Kanazawa would be a Chinese mole! Nah.

Readers C, D, E, F, G, . . . all tell me that if the Chinese students at our universities are China’s second- and third-raters, then we are in deep, deep trouble.