A Ritual Economy of ‘Talent’: China and Overseas Chinese Professionals

Abstract Since the Guangzhou municipality in south China organised the first Overseas Students Fair in 1998, large conventions aimed at recruiting overseas Chinese professionals (OCPs) have become a regular scene in major cities in China. These conventions constitute one of the most visible means of the Chinese government's engagement with the 800,000 OCPs who remain overseas after receiving tertiary education abroad. Characteristic of the conventions, and OCP policies in general, is a highly 'materialistic' thinking: it is argued that OCPs deserve generous financial rewards because they are economically and technologically beneficial to China, and that financial reward is the most feasible means to attract them back. My ethnographic data, however, reveal that the language of economism is communicated in a highly ritualistic manner and, conversely, political rituals serve as a crucial part of the conventions. The ritualised economic- and technological-determinist discourse appears apolitical, yet acquires strong mobilising and legitimating power, and is thus particularly effective in accommodating OCPs into the established political order. The concept 'ritual economy' denotes such deep intertwining between the economic, the ritualistic and the political. Keywords: Ritual EconomyChinese GovernmentOverseas Chinese ProfessionalsMigration Acknowledgements This paper is based on a project which was funded by the Asian Development Bank and carried out in close association with the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO), State Council, People's Republic of China. I am grateful to staff at OCAO for sharing with me their insights and offering me the rare opportunity to conduct participatory observation. Notes 1. The first Liberation truck, manufactured in 1956 in Changchun, was widely hailed in China as a symbol of the country's economic independence and socialist industrialisation. Mao Zedong showed a strong personal interest in the truck. 2. Discourses and activities about the overseas populations are more 'ritualised' than those about domestic ones precisely because the relationship between the state and the diaspora is contentious and unstable. Rites serve as a site for defining, negotiating and managing such relationships. 3. A report by OCAO in early 2002 indicates that, among the estimated 30 million 'old' overseas Chinese as opposed to those who left after the Reform, there are about '600,000 overseas Chinese technology personnel in Western developed countries. There are 450,000 in the USA alone, including 30,000 world-class professionals, making up about one quarter of the 130,000 first-rank scientists and technology personnel in the USA' (OCAO Citation2002: 2). We cannot identify the exact basis of this estimate, but it is a consensus that the number of 30 million is a gross underestimate and that 600,000 is also a fairly conservative estimate. 4. By the end of 2006, more than 1 million students in total had gone overseas for study and about 270,000 had returned to China on a long-term basis (Ministry of Education Citation2009). 5. This group includes those who have reached the position of principal investigator in a research institute or branch manager in a large corporation, have important research achievements or have published significant papers in influential international journals, or are appointed to certain positions in government or non-government organisations. Two-thirds are based in the USA. 6. Educational exchanges with the West began before that, in 1972–73, with the UK, Australia, France, Italy, New Zealand, Canada and other countries with which China had established diplomatic relations. But the numbers of students involved were very small. 7. In Chinese, studying abroad without state sponsorship is called zifei liuxue, literally meaning 'self-financed overseas education'. But most Chinese students who moved abroad to study without government funding are supported by scholarships from the receiving universities or other international foundations. 8. The term weiguo fuwu was formally articulated for the first time in the document Suggestions on Encouraging Overseas Students to Serve Countries by Various Means, jointly issued by five ministries on 14 May 2001. 9. The China Diaspora Web (www.hslmw.com), run by the state OCAO, is another major domain for the diaspora. The websites Liuxue.net (www.liuxue.net), managed by the MoE, China Overseas Talents (MoP— www.chinatalents.gov.cn) and CAS Overseas Study and Continuing Education (www.castalents.ac.cn) tend to be more focused, primarily providing OCPs with policy-related information. Other major websites are China Human Resource Network (http://www.hr.com.cn/), China International Employment Net (http://www.chinajob.cc/), and Chinese Service Centre for Scholarly Exchange (http://www.cscse.edu.cn/); examples of province- and municipality-based websites are Nanjing International Talent Networks (www.wininjob.com) and Liaoning Overseas Chinese Scholar Innovation Engineering Network (http://www.ocs-ln,gov.cn). 10. For a discussion of how holiday celebrations and national conferences in post-apartheid South Africa serve to instil a sense of unity and pride within the African National Congress party, see Jensen (Citation2001: 106). 11. For a fuller review of central government's initiatives regarding OCPs, see Xiang (Citation2005). 12. Chunhui literally means 'the spring sunlight'. The expression originates from a well-known poem: 'How can the soul of small grass, repay the sunlight of the spring', which refers to a child's gratitude to his or her parents.

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