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Ravi Kant

A country’s diaspora can be a symbol of its pride and power. A nation’s diaspora can help it build international value through success stories, promote its soft power through culture and contribute to its economic progress through remittances, investments and transfers of expertise.
India and China have among the world’s largest diasporas. They also offer two very different models of how countries can leverage their diasporas.
In India, before the 1991 reforms, people mostly saw those who left as a “brain drain”. But post-liberalisation, people started to see the Indian diaspora as an economic bridge to capital, technology and global markets. In 2004, India set up a ministry to oversee the affairs of Indians abroad, merging it with the Ministry of External Affairs in 2016.
China’s case was different. It recognised much earlier that overseas education could serve national development. Among a group sent to France in 1920 as part of a work-study movement was Deng Xiaoping. Though the future leader’s studies were cut short due to a funds shortage, Deng would go on to make foreign education a national policy. In 1978, Deng announced that 3,000 would be sent overseas every year for further education to rebuild China’s scientific community.
China did face a significant brain drain during the 1980s and early 1990s. But the strategy paid off after 2001, with World Trade Organization membership. Multinational corporations such as Microsoft, Intel and Oracle established research and technology centres in China, creating well-paid jobs that encourage Chinese expatriates to return.
They became bridges between global companies and China’s new tech ecosystem, effectively shifting the cost of training new talent to Western institutions.

China also developed programmes, such as the “Thousand Talents” initiative in 2008, to attract global talent. The government’s focus soon shifted to strategic fields such as artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, biotechnology and aerospace. Ambition and capital support changed the game as Chinese universities shot up global rankings. By 2018, China had surpassed the United States in the number of scientific papers published. It had broken the barrier from imitator to innovator.
Still, the biggest achievement of China’s policy was the switch from brain drain to gain. Between 1978 and 2003, only 17.3 per cent of Chinese international students returned but between 2013 and 2018, the percentage had risen to 80 per cent – a reflection of the better opportunities and incentives at home.
One prime example is Yang Zhilin, who obtained his PhD in America and returned in 2019, later co-founding Moonshot AI. Today, his Kimi K3 model is a serious challenger to Western frontier models from the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI, using Silicon Valley-style engineering to offer affordable open-weight advanced AI models.
China is becoming the place where the next AI founders believe they have a better chance to build a career. Beijing’s Zhongguancun is emerging as a serious rival to California’s Silicon Valley. This all traces back to Deng’s vision. Today, China produces more graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) than the US.


As recently as a decade ago, someone like Yang was more likely to stay in the US and build his start-up there, following in the footsteps of immigrants such as Elon Musk and Jensen Huang. Today, China’s diaspora is keen to contribute to China’s intellectual and economic growth.
Other countries may offer jobs, but China now offers a better ecosystem to build a company, a career, even a legacy. The focus is shifting from short-term economic gains to long-term impact – unlike with the Indian diaspora.
For comparison, India received US$129 billion in remittances in 2024 while China received US$48 billion, according to World Bank estimates. India’s remittances also make up a bigger percentage of its gross domestic product, at over 3 per cent, compared with China’s 0.1-0.2 per cent. The difference is clear. The impact of India’s diaspora remains heavily tied to remittances and skilled labour, while China’s is increasingly reflected in investment, technology, intellectual property (IP) transfers and commercial networks.
A 2023 study by the US National Bureau of Economic Research using 2018 data found that Chinese researchers who had come back from the US contributed to 38 per cent of research papers written from a Chinese address while China-born researchers in the US contributed to 27 per cent of US-addressed papers. Interestingly, papers involving Chinese diaspora and returnee researchers had a higher citation impact.

China has emphasised bringing back its overseas talent to build long-term economic and technological strength through expertise, IP, businesses, institutions and capital, apart from remittances. On the contrary, India appears to have prioritised short-term economic gains through remittances over long-term capacity building. Neither the Indian government nor overseas Indians have shown the sort of intention that the Chinese have in building the ecosystem to create the next Google or Microsoft.
So, when the US proposes to raise H-1B visa fees for skilled foreign workers or shorten the 60-day visa grace period for foreign graduates, India’s dependence on foreign ecosystems becomes painfully obvious. Of the H-1B visas granted in the 2024 financial year, 71 per cent went to Indian-born applicants. Today, many in the Indian diaspora face uncertainty, as returning to India can be difficult due to a lack of an ecosystem to absorb their skills. Their mass return would also affect India’s remittance inflows.
While China has turned its diaspora into an extension of its domestic economy, India has largely allowed its diaspora to strengthen other economies. In leveraging global talent, China has clearly emerged as the winner in the diaspora power race.


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While Beijing has turned its diaspora into an extension of its domestic economy, New Delhi has largely allowed its diaspora to strengthen other economies


While Beijing has turned its diaspora into an extension of its domestic economy, New Delhi has largely allowed its diaspora to strengthen other economies.


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Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


China is leveraging its diaspora to boost the economy, unlike India

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}While Beijing has turned its diaspora into an extension of its domestic economy, New Delhi has largely allowed its diaspora to strengthen other economies

While Beijing has turned its diaspora into an extension of its domestic economy, New Delhi has largely allowed its diaspora to strengthen other economies