China’s programme for recruiting foreign scientists comes under scrutiny
A German physicist recruited under a programme to attract foreign scientists to China has charged his host with diverting funds - and other scholars hired under the plan seem to share his misgivings
In a hotel room on the sidelines of a conference in China in 2011, theoretical physicist Ulf Leonhardt says he got an offer that was too good to refuse. The Centre for Optical and Electromagnetic Research (COER) here at South China Normal University (SCNU) invited him to spend 3 months a year at the centre, during which COER would pay him a monthly salary of 133,333 yuan: three times greater than at his tenured position at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom.
A prominent figure in theoretical physics who had made headlines by outlining a theoretical framework for an invisibility cloak, Leonhardt had no shortage of career prospects. But the offer from Guangzhou came at a moment when he was hard up for flexible funding that would allow him to travel and bring in visitors. And Leonhardt had watched, impressed, as China's huge investment in science had begun to reap dividends. Since his first visit in 2008, he'd noted “a really steep increase both in the quantity and quality” of papers in his field, he says. A longer stay made sense.
To supplement Leonhardt's COER salary, photonics expert Sailing He and colleagues at COER helped him apply to two government programs for attracting foreign talent: the Recruitment Program of Foreign Experts, or “Thousand Talents” plan, which offers a onetime 500,000 yuan resettlement subsidy for a minimum of 3 years of part-time work, and a program offshoot called the Guangdong Province Leading Talent award, which brings an additional one-time subsidy of 1 million yuan plus up to 5 million yuan in research funds over 5 years. (The full-time Thousand Talents program, which Leonhardt did not participate in, includes research funding as well as a subsidy.)
Thousand Talents and similar programs had struggled to attract candidates of international calibre, and Leonhardt, who was applying at the peak of his career, seemed a shoo-in. By September 2012, he had snagged acceptances from both programs and had signed a 5-year contract with COER. The centre offered his partner, Jana Silberg, a part-time job, too.
But Leonhardt and Silberg would come to suspect that a substantial portion of his grant money and the salary due to Silberg were being diverted to other uses. After hiring lawyers to investigate, they uncovered a web of misinformation, including incorrectly translated agreements and covert purchases of equipment at COER. “The fraud they committed was so brazen,” charges Leonhardt, who bailed out of his contract after spending just one summer in Guangzhou.
Sailing He flatly denies that COER diverted any funds, and others at COER say that Leonhardt agreed up front to an arrangement in which the bulk of his grant would be administered by others. Sailing He calls Leonhardt ungrateful for COER's help in securing the lucrative arrangement: “He was getting $20,000 USD a month. He doesn't need to care about the details.”
At a time when China is spending heavily to recruit talented overseas scientists, the dispute between COER and Leonhardt is a cautionary tale. Interviews with other foreign-born recipients of Thousand Talents awards reveal that host institutions in several instances have seized the reins, controlling everything from the application process to grant administration. Among Thousand Talents awardees interviewed by Science, ignorance of the program's nuts and bolts—even at the most basic level, such as the amount of money they are due—is the norm.
