China is coming.
They sold us cars, shoes, bras, computers. Now their scientists are set to flood into Europe. For those who remember how Britain balked at giving residency permits to 50,000 elite Hong Kong Chinese at the 1997 colony handover, the potential numbers are staggering.
Over 1.2 million will be eligible for a golden handshake package to fill the boffin skills gap. Europe doesn't produce enough scientists to compete with the rest of the world.
The continent is not giving birth to enough young people, those young people that are born don't want to go into science because it is too difficult and unrenumerative, and those that do go into science use their degrees to get into good finance jobs, not research or teaching.
The result: Europe no longer wins Nobel prizes.
The golden handshake - including visa, residence and employment permit free permission to settle anywhere in Europe - and a 45,000 euro annual stipend while looking for posts is sure to attract the growing number of post graduates emerging from China's universities - but who go straight into local unemployment, or a low paid job.
Even in booming China, there is not enough business to support the five million science graduates annually from, among others, the astonishing 25 research universities that are in the process of being built. (Europe can't even get its single Institute of Technology off the ground.)
Those that do employ Chinese scientists, such as Microsoft research lab Asia, get the pick of the crop. Its director was recently quoted as saying "In China, if you are one in a million, there are 1,300 people like you." Its creative output outdoes all the other three Microsoft research labs - including the one in Cambridge, England, and in Seattle, according to an interview Bill Gates gave last year. But Microsoft is as yet still in a minority.
"Chinese graduates used to be able to walk into a secure state job in China," says Jianji An, a Chinese diplomat "But because of the expansion of numbers and a new free market philosophy, no longer."
The visas will be granted subject to competitions announced on the commission's website and the programme was launched at an EU-China summit in Brussels this week, which I attended, during which China's continuing contribution to the Galileo global positioning satellite programme and its support for the ITER fusion reactor were also affirmed.
China is the largest single external shareholder in the EU's GPS Galileo project - whose recently mooted extension of use to military purposes to recoup outlays worries Washington. And the country gave Europe political support on the fusion reactor project, tipping the vote for its location from Japan to Cadarache in France - despite Japan's proximity. "The official reason was we were worried about earthquakes, but really it was a political decision," said one Chinese diplomat. All three projects indicate a deepening of relations between Europe and China on science issues, despite China's poor human rights reputation.
China has also been deepening its links with the US science community: the US national science foundation opened an office in Beijing in May, in order to collaborate more closely
on global problems like climate change, ecological disasters and the spread of contagious diseases. China is launching a moon probe next year (see picture) and hopes to be the first power to return to the moon, perhaps by 2015. But young Chinese scientists are being deterred from studying and working in the US because of the complexities of visa regulations introduced since 9/11.
Any Nobel prize boost works both ways, as the exodus of researchers to Europe - almost half as many as Europe has already - could bring with it enormous technology transfer benefits if and when the Chinese return home. "We don't see it as a brain drain, but a brain train," said one diplomat. Science policy analyst Michael Lubell of the American Physical Society was recently quoted as saying that if the twentieth century had the arms race, this century would have the brains race. But at the same time as the summit, I met an MEP and his assitant who showed me the dark side of China, more of which later.
They sold us cars, shoes, bras, computers. Now their scientists are set to flood into Europe. For those who remember how Britain balked at giving residency permits to 50,000 elite Hong Kong Chinese at the 1997 colony handover, the potential numbers are staggering.
Over 1.2 million will be eligible for a golden handshake package to fill the boffin skills gap. Europe doesn't produce enough scientists to compete with the rest of the world.
The continent is not giving birth to enough young people, those young people that are born don't want to go into science because it is too difficult and unrenumerative, and those that do go into science use their degrees to get into good finance jobs, not research or teaching.
The result: Europe no longer wins Nobel prizes.
The golden handshake - including visa, residence and employment permit free permission to settle anywhere in Europe - and a 45,000 euro annual stipend while looking for posts is sure to attract the growing number of post graduates emerging from China's universities - but who go straight into local unemployment, or a low paid job.
Even in booming China, there is not enough business to support the five million science graduates annually from, among others, the astonishing 25 research universities that are in the process of being built. (Europe can't even get its single Institute of Technology off the ground.)
Those that do employ Chinese scientists, such as Microsoft research lab Asia, get the pick of the crop. Its director was recently quoted as saying "In China, if you are one in a million, there are 1,300 people like you." Its creative output outdoes all the other three Microsoft research labs - including the one in Cambridge, England, and in Seattle, according to an interview Bill Gates gave last year. But Microsoft is as yet still in a minority.
"Chinese graduates used to be able to walk into a secure state job in China," says Jianji An, a Chinese diplomat "But because of the expansion of numbers and a new free market philosophy, no longer."
The visas will be granted subject to competitions announced on the commission's website and the programme was launched at an EU-China summit in Brussels this week, which I attended, during which China's continuing contribution to the Galileo global positioning satellite programme and its support for the ITER fusion reactor were also affirmed.
China is the largest single external shareholder in the EU's GPS Galileo project - whose recently mooted extension of use to military purposes to recoup outlays worries Washington. And the country gave Europe political support on the fusion reactor project, tipping the vote for its location from Japan to Cadarache in France - despite Japan's proximity. "The official reason was we were worried about earthquakes, but really it was a political decision," said one Chinese diplomat. All three projects indicate a deepening of relations between Europe and China on science issues, despite China's poor human rights reputation.
China has also been deepening its links with the US science community: the US national science foundation opened an office in Beijing in May, in order to collaborate more closely
on global problems like climate change, ecological disasters and the spread of contagious diseases. China is launching a moon probe next year (see picture) and hopes to be the first power to return to the moon, perhaps by 2015. But young Chinese scientists are being deterred from studying and working in the US because of the complexities of visa regulations introduced since 9/11.
Any Nobel prize boost works both ways, as the exodus of researchers to Europe - almost half as many as Europe has already - could bring with it enormous technology transfer benefits if and when the Chinese return home. "We don't see it as a brain drain, but a brain train," said one diplomat. Science policy analyst Michael Lubell of the American Physical Society was recently quoted as saying that if the twentieth century had the arms race, this century would have the brains race. But at the same time as the summit, I met an MEP and his assitant who showed me the dark side of China, more of which later.
