One Departure Is Manageable, but the Pattern Matters for Quantum R&D

When a single researcher moves overseas, it seldom changes the direction of a national research environment on its own. Universities hire, labs adapt, and projects continue. But when departures become a repeatable pattern across years, the impact shifts from an isolated personnel change to a structural issue: who trains the next generation, where the advanced labs grow fastest, and which countries accumulate momentum in strategic fields.

That framing is increasingly relevant for the US–China quantum science competition and the reverse brain drain in quantum research. A growing body of research and reporting describes an accelerating “reverse brain drain,” in which Chinese-origin scientists trained or employed in the United States take full-time roles in China. A widely cited snapshot comes from Stanford SCCEI’s analysis of relocation trends, which found departures increased substantially after 2018 with a rising share of relocations going to China.

Such moves matter because modern R&D is not simply a count of individual researchers. Innovation is built through networks comprised of multi-year grant teams, shared experimental platforms, long-running lab cultures, and mentorship pipelines turning graduate students into principal investigators. When a steady stream of capable scientists exits the system, the US loses more than short-term output. It loses future faculty leadership and the training capacity—a loss compounding over time.

The Numbers Point to Accumulation, not Anecdotes

Stanford’s SCCEI brief reports 19,955 scientists of Chinese descent who began their careers in the US relocated abroad between 2010 and 2021, with departures rising sharply after 2018. Of the departures, about two-thirds relocated to mainland China and Hong Kong by 2021. More recent higher education reporting has also tracked the pattern at a more granular level. Times Higher Education, citing a CNN tally, reported at least 85 rising or established US-based scientists joined Chinese institutions full-time since early 2024 and over half doing so in 2025. These are not decisive shifts individually. But taken together, they reinforce a simple point: the competitive impact comes from accumulation.

Why Quantum is Especially Sensitive to Talent Flows

Quantum R&D sits as an imperative to national strategy. It spans quantum computing, quantum networking, and quantum sensing and metrology—areas with clear implications for long-term technological advantage. These fields are sufficiently niche for shifts in talent to be felt sooner than in larger, more established disciplines. This is why the reverse brain drain in quantum research carries outsized strategic weight.

China’s quantum path illustrates how long-term investment and capability-building can translate into landmark results. The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) summary of the Micius satellite launch describes the August 2016 deployment of the world’s first quantum communications satellite as a milestone in space-to-ground quantum communications. On the computing side, the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) has publicly reported advances such as Zuchongzhi-3, a 105-qubit superconducting prototype, presented as a step forward in benchmarking quantum computational performance. Additional reporting has also highlighted follow-on work connected to Zuchongzhi variants and quantum error-correction-related results.

Those achievements are the product of large teams and institutions vice any single person. But the broader environment producing them is shaped by talent, funding, infrastructure, and the ability to recruit and retain researchers at scale.

Two Examples Illustrating the Trend

One of the most visible examples of returnee-driven quantum leadership is Pan Jianwei, a central figure in China’s quantum ecosystem. USTC’s own profile in its quantum portal notes that Pan returned to China in 2001 to establish a lab focused on manipulating the quantum properties of photons. CAS has also highlighted Pan’s role as chief scientist for the quantum satellite project and his return to USTC in 2001. Over time, the USTC research environment he helped build contributed to widely covered milestones in quantum communication and photonic quantum information science.

A newer example is Chenglong You (由成龙), a quantum physicist with research spanning quantum photonics and precision measurement. In mid-January, 2026, the South China Morning Post reported Chenglong You left the US to take a position at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) as a professor. Notably, the reporting does not quote You directly on his motivation to leave the US. But what the move does signify is another active researcher shifting from the US quantum pipeline to China’s growing quantum research structure.

The “So What” for the US Quantum Race

You’s departure alone is not a crisis. The bigger picture is the repeated moves such as his especially across quantum, AI, semiconductors, and advanced physics. Moves which may gradually reallocate research capacity and leadership. If the trend continues, the US risks a slow erosion of specialized talent density, while China gains experienced researchers and the mentorship bandwidth needed to scale programs faster. In cutting-edge technologies, the competitive edge rarely flips overnight. More often, it shifts through steady accumulation.