Latest news with #ThousandTalentsPlan
India Today
03-07-2025
- Business
- India Today
Is India's Rs 1 trillion RDI scheme inspired by China's Thousand Talents Plan? Not quite
In order to revitalise India's R&D ecosystem, the government has cleared the Rs 1 lakh crore Research Development and Innovation (RDI) Scheme. The policy aims to inject much-needed capital into deep-tech sectors and strategic industries, primarily by offering startups and private players long-tenure, low-interest loans and equity details of the initiative emerged, comparisons began to surface. Most notably with China's controversial Thousand Talents Plan (TTP) (launched in 2008). That programme was Beijing's ambitious bid to bring home its brightest minds from across the globe. So, is India now trying to emulate China's Plan?advertisementNot quite. And the difference is more than cosmetic. 'The Rs. 1-trillion RDI scheme is a welcome move, but it's not cut from the same cloth as China's Thousand Talents Plan,' says Srinath Sridharan, Corporate Advisor & Independent Director on Corporate Boards. 'It's a financial intervention, not a people strategy.'China's TTP was designed with the aim of reversing brain drain. It dangled lucrative incentives, including research autonomy, leadership posts, lab funding, and generous salaries, to draw back Chinese-origin scientists, engineers, and tech entrepreneurs from elite institutions programme placed many of them directly into leadership roles in high-tech firms, especially in fields like AI, genomics, and quantum new scheme, by contrast, takes a different tack. There's no direct outreach to diaspora talent. No talk of any central mechanism to attract returning scientists. No coordinated effort is being made to fast-track them into institutions or give them decision-making authority in national R&D not about repatriating talent,' Sridharan argues. It's about unlocking capital to stimulate innovation at home. That's a fundamentally different design.'TWO MODELS, TWO MINDSETSWhere China's approach was centrally planned and state-directed, India's RDI scheme is built around market forces. The expectation is that funding will enable private players to take more risks in R&D-heavy companies (aka the sunrise sectors) — health tech, semiconductors, green energy — areas where returns are uncertain and therein lies the rub.'Innovation doesn't emerge from capital alone,' Sridharan cautions. 'It needs minds... motivated, skilled, and empowered minds.'For India to consider shifting from brain drain to brain gain, we need more than just a funding mechanism. What's missing (and much-needed) is a long-term vision that connects all three: talent, infrastructure, and does one get there? First, by creating globally competitive research institutions with operational autonomy; second, ensuring urban ecosystems that can support the lifestyle, career, and educational expectations of those returning scientists; third, cutting the red tape that may end up slowing down or stifling scientific exploration; and above all, articulating a clear national innovation agenda with SUCCESS AND FALLOUTIt is true that China's TTP came with serious baggage. On the one hand, the Plan succeeded in attracting thousands of top-tier researchers and repositioned Beijing as a serious tech player. But it also triggered geopolitical concerns, especially in the U.S., where several scientists who were affiliated with the programme were accused of failing to disclose Chinese ties or funding. The Plan even led to investigations, terminations, and, in some cases, even criminal 2022, under international pressure and domestic recalibration, Beijing hurriedly retired the original TTP. Although some elements of it live on in other points out that India doesn't need to replicate the Chinese model as it were. But there's a lesson there for us: 'China got it right that talent follows purpose. If your system signals seriousness, autonomy, and ambition, top talent will pay attention.'THE ROAD AHEADIndia's RDI scheme has laid the financial groundwork. But unless there's an equally compelling plan to mobilise human capital both domestically and globally, the country could end up with capital-rich labs and boardrooms but a scarcity of scientific like building a space rocket and forgetting to train the astronauts. You can get off the ground, but not go India hopes to lead in frontier innovation by 2047, it must think beyond money. It must craft a story bold enough to bring its brightest minds home not just to participate, but to lead.- Ends advertisement
India Today
30-06-2025
- Business
- India Today
China's Thousand Talents Plan: A weapon to win the tech race
In 2008, as China stood on the cusp of transforming from a manufacturing-led economy to a knowledge-driven one, the Chinese Communist Party launched one of the most ambitious talent recruitment strategies in modern history. They called it the Thousand Talents Plan (TTP).Initially, it aimed to be a conventional effort to bring back the diaspora, but the layers of this programme reveal a bold, controversial, and yet a highly calculated attempt by Beijing to close the innovation gap with the TTP, despite the controversies, is acknowledged as a successful, not always transparent, experiment in long-term strategic planning. Academics say it has reshaped the career calculus for many top-tier scientists and brought China significantly closer to the innovation ORIGIN: BRAIN GAIN V/S BRAIN DRAIN For decades, China's best minds left home in search of better research opportunities, freer academic environments, and their own career growth. They travelled mostly to the United States, which became the de facto talent magnet of the modern world. This 'brain drain' persisted well into the early 2000s, even as China's economic and technological capacities began to rise was then that China felt a need to reverse this trend. Li Yuanchao, head of the CCP's Organisation Department, initiated the TTP in December 2008. The aim was deceptively simple — attract 2,000 elite overseas Chinese researchers and entrepreneurs to return to China and contribute to its scientific and technological 2011, the scope of the programme had expanded. A new youth-focused offshoot, the Young Thousand Talents (YTT) programme, targeted early-career significantly, the original plan began courting non-Chinese foreign experts, with the state aiming to attract 50 to 100 such individuals annually over the next LURESuccessful candidates were offered a one-time settlement bonus of up to 1 million yuan, with additional research funding ranging from 3 to 5 million yuan. There were relocation packages offered that included subsidised housing, paid return trips home, spousal employment assistance, and educational support for children — a full-suite offering that rivalled or even exceeded what was available in many Western plan was also free of the bureaucratic red tape that often accompanies foreign appointments in China. For many, this alone presented an attractive Jon Antilla, an organic chemist with more than a decade of experience in the U.S. After growing frustrated with the time-consuming chase for research funding, he left his tenured post at the University of South Florida and moved to Tianjin University in China under the Thousand Talents wasn't alone. Other faculty members in Tianjin's chemistry department had similarly walked away from tenured roles at institutions like UC San Diego and Texas A&M — all drawn by China's generous, hassle-free funding and institutional GAINSadvertisementOver the past decade, more than 7,000 scientists and entrepreneurs, both Chinese returnees and foreign nationals, have reportedly taken up positions under the Thousand Talents Plan. Many were placed in key state laboratories, top universities, or even embedded into start-up ecosystems focused on AI, biotech, quantum computing, and clean universities rapidly climbed in global rankings, and research output (especially in STEM fields) surged. In strategic sectors like semiconductors, aerospace, and 5G, China moved from follower to contender 2017, China overtook the U.S. in terms of the number of research papers published in natural sciences. This was said to be due to the cumulative impact of initiatives like FALLOUTAlthough China said the TTP was a benign recruitment effort, Western intelligence agencies, especially in the U.S., raised FBI claimed the programme 'encouraged theft of intellectual property and sensitive technology,' positioning the TTP as part of a broader strategy to erode America's scientific and economic edge. While some of these claims led to prosecutions, many others were dropped, drawing criticism that the backlash may have also led to racial profiling and a chilling effect on legitimate academic AND CONTINUITYFaced with this scrutiny, the Chinese government was compelled to shelve public references to the Thousand Talents Plan around the effort itself never stopped. According to a 2023 Reuters investigation, the initiative was quietly revived under new names and frameworks, most notably the Qiming (Enlightenment) Programme. Overseen by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Qiming offers even more generous incentives, including home-buying subsidies and signing bonuses of up to 5 million unlike TTP, the Qiming operates in stealth. Recipients are not publicly named, and their activities are kept off official FOR FUTUREThe U.S., Canada, the UK, and Australia have all pursued 'cherry-picking' immigration strategies for decades. From the U.S. EB-1 visa for 'extraordinary ability' to the UK's Global Talent Visa. Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea have also long offered returnee programmes for diaspora scientists. China, too, seized the moment to turn its 'brain drain' into a deliberate brain TTP marked a turning point: talent is definitely no longer just about economics — it's about geopolitics.- Ends advertisement
Time of India
02-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
With the pvt sector indifferent to R&D, India risks missing the deep-tech bus, or getting locked out
In the 2000s, China recognised that technological dependence was a strategic liability because it relied on US chips, Western operating systems and telecom infra. This triggered a strategy rooted in constructive paranoia, and the launch of mission-driven policies: Medium- and Long-Term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology (2006-20): This aimed to make China an 'innovation-oriented nation'. Made in China 2025: It targeted dominance in 10 hi-tech sectors. Thousand Talents Plan (2008): This programme was launched to reverse brain drain, and attract global researchers. It has received massive state support through guidance funds, industrial subsidies and tech-focused SOEs. China also doubled down on patenting, domestic standards and end-to-end industrial ecosystems, from semiconductors to green energy. R&D investment surged past 2.5% of GDP, with a rapidly rising share from the private sector. Today, China leads the world in AI patents, EV production, solar capacity and quantum publications. Meanwhile, India faces similar vulnerabilities China faced 25 years ago: imported chips, weak indigenous IP, low- tech exports and a fragmented research base. And the response has been uneven. GoI has launched Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), a ₹1 lakh cr R&D fund, expanded PLI schemes, and invested in semiconductors, space tech, clean energy and quantum. For the first time, the government is adopting a full-spectrum approach to funding research and innovation across all technology readiness levels (TRLs). While ANRF will focus on early-stage discovery (TRLs 1-3) and improve ease of doing science with DST, a soon-to-be-finalised ₹1 lakh cr R&D fund should drive private investment in mid-to-late-stage innovation (TRLs 4-9) through long-term, near-zero-interest loans. This fund shifts focus from grants to outcome-linked support for developing commercially viable tech. While the need for greater funding in basic research is acknowledged, GoI is laying the essential groundwork to build a self-sustaining R&D ecosystem. Yet, the private sector remains risk-averse, contributing barely a third of national R&D. India's R&D-to-GDP ratio remains stuck below 0.7%, with little traction in patenting or deep-tech commercialisation. The innovation pipeline is still thin. Ex-Intel CEO Andrew Grove made the line, 'Let's be paranoid' - with its philosophy of the importance of proactive preparedness for unexpected changes and strategic inflection points - famous. And, yet, even Intel wasn't paranoid enough. It missed the AI inflection point, and today Nvidia has overtaken it in valuation, strategic relevance and tech leadership. A similar inversion is unfolding between China and the US, driven by who innovates faster and scales deeper. Unfortunately, while GoI is paranoid, India's private sector isn't. In 2024, Foundation for Advancing Science & Technology (FAST) published a comparative study, 'State of Industry R&D in India', of 59 Indian and 60 global firms across six key sectors: pharma, software, defence, chemicals, automobiles, and energy. The study, conducted between FY16 and FY23, reveals a persistent input-output gap. Global firms, on average, reported 2.9x R&D intensity (spend as % of revenue), 3.7x share of PhD-qualified employees, and 2.9x R&D spending as share of profits than Indian firms. On output indicators, the disparity is starker. Global firms generated 13.1x patents and 1.3x scientific publications per billion dollars of revenue compared to their Indian counterparts. In software, global firms had 32x R&D intensity and 12.1x patents by revenue. In pharma, India's strongest sector, R&D intensity (5.8%) lagged far behind global peers (17.3%). The only parameter where Indian firms outperformed was in R&D disclosure, with an average disclosure score of 6.2 (out of 10) vs 3.7 for global firms. The European Commission recently released the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard 2024. It presents data on the top global 2,000 companies investing in R&D. They invested ₹1,257.7 bn in R&D in 2023. Indian firms accounted for ₹5.5 bn, or about 0.4%, of global industrial R&D investment, with only 15 companies featuring among the world's top 2,000 R&D spenders. This places India behind not only advanced economies like the US (₹531.8 bn, 681 firms) and China (₹215.8 bn, 524 firms), but also innovation-intensive small economies such as South Korea (₹42.5 bn, 40 firms), Taiwan (₹24.7 bn, 55 firms), and Ireland (₹10.4 bn, 24 firms). Sustained long-term economic growth is driven by investments in knowledge and innovation. India's failure to internalise this principle within its industrial ecosystem suggests presence of constraints: low absorptive capacity, weak industry-academia linkages, and limited interest from the private sector in high-risk R&D. Persistent underrepresentation of Indian firms in global innovation rankings reflects a missing industrial policy focus on Schumpeterian creative destruction, without which India risks being confined to low-value segments of GVCs. In Liu Cixin's 2008 science fiction novel, The Three-Body Problem, the world gets paralysed by the sudden collapse of scientific progress. Stagnation is the real nightmare. It's not fiction any more. For India, the risk isn't that we fail. It's that we're too comfortable even to try. Innovation can't be outsourced. If there's a gap between what scientists are doing and what businesses need, then companies must invest in R&D, collaborate with academia, and shape research. If the private sector stays disengaged, we'll keep watching others lead. We just aren't paranoid enough.
Time of India
01-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
With the pvt sector indifferent to R&D, India risks missing the deep-tech bus, or getting locked out
In the 2000s, China recognised that technological dependence was a strategic liability because it relied on US chips, Western operating systems and telecom infra. This triggered a strategy rooted in constructive paranoia, and the launch of mission-driven policies: #Pahalgam Terrorist Attack Nuclear Power! How India and Pakistan's arsenals stack up Does America have a plan to capture Pakistan's nuclear weapons? Airspace blockade: India plots a flight path to skip Pakistan Medium- and Long-Term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology (2006-20): This aimed to make China an 'innovation-oriented nation'. Made in China 2025 : It targeted dominance in 10 hi-tech sectors. Thousand Talents Plan (2008): This programme was launched to reverse brain drain, and attract global researchers. It has received massive state support through guidance funds, industrial subsidies and tech-focused SOEs. China also doubled down on patenting, domestic standards and end-to-end industrial ecosystems, from semiconductors to green energy. R&D investment surged past 2.5% of GDP, with a rapidly rising share from the private sector. Today, China leads the world in AI patents, EV production, solar capacity and quantum publications. Live Events Meanwhile, India faces similar vulnerabilities China faced 25 years ago: imported chips, weak indigenous IP, low- tech exports and a fragmented research base. And the response has been uneven. GoI has launched Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), a ₹1 lakh cr R&D fund, expanded PLI schemes, and invested in semiconductors, space tech, clean energy and quantum. For the first time, the government is adopting a full-spectrum approach to funding research and innovation across all technology readiness levels (TRLs). While ANRF will focus on early-stage discovery (TRLs 1-3) and improve ease of doing science with DST, a soon-to-be-finalised ₹1 lakh cr R&D fund should drive private investment in mid-to-late-stage innovation (TRLs 4-9) through long-term, near-zero-interest loans. This fund shifts focus from grants to outcome-linked support for developing commercially viable tech. While the need for greater funding in basic research is acknowledged, GoI is laying the essential groundwork to build a self-sustaining R&D ecosystem. Yet, the private sector remains risk-averse, contributing barely a third of national R&D. India's R&D-to-GDP ratio remains stuck below 0.7%, with little traction in patenting or deep-tech commercialisation. The innovation pipeline is still thin. Ex-Intel CEO Andrew Grove made the line, 'Let's be paranoid' - with its philosophy of the importance of proactive preparedness for unexpected changes and strategic inflection points - famous. And, yet, even Intel wasn't paranoid enough. It missed the AI inflection point, and today Nvidia has overtaken it in valuation, strategic relevance and tech leadership. A similar inversion is unfolding between China and the US, driven by who innovates faster and scales deeper. Unfortunately, while GoI is paranoid, India's private sector isn't. In 2024, Foundation for Advancing Science & Technology (FAST) published a comparative study, 'State of Industry R&D in India', of 59 Indian and 60 global firms across six key sectors: pharma, software, defence, chemicals, automobiles, and energy. The study, conducted between FY16 and FY23, reveals a persistent input-output gap. Global firms, on average, reported 2.9x R&D intensity (spend as % of revenue), 3.7x share of PhD-qualified employees, and 2.9x R&D spending as share of profits than Indian firms. On output indicators, the disparity is starker. Global firms generated 13.1x patents and 1.3x scientific publications per billion dollars of revenue compared to their Indian counterparts. In software, global firms had 32x R&D intensity and 12.1x patents by revenue. In pharma, India's strongest sector, R&D intensity (5.8%) lagged far behind global peers (17.3%). The only parameter where Indian firms outperformed was in R&D disclosure, with an average disclosure score of 6.2 (out of 10) vs 3.7 for global firms. The European Commission recently released the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard 2024. It presents data on the top global 2,000 companies investing in R&D. They invested ₹1,257.7 bn in R&D in 2023. Indian firms accounted for ₹5.5 bn, or about 0.4%, of global industrial R&D investment, with only 15 companies featuring among the world's top 2,000 R&D spenders. This places India behind not only advanced economies like the US (₹531.8 bn, 681 firms) and China (₹215.8 bn, 524 firms), but also innovation-intensive small economies such as South Korea (₹42.5 bn, 40 firms), Taiwan (₹24.7 bn, 55 firms), and Ireland (₹10.4 bn, 24 firms). Sustained long-term economic growth is driven by investments in knowledge and innovation. India's failure to internalise this principle within its industrial ecosystem suggests presence of constraints: low absorptive capacity, weak industry-academia linkages, and limited interest from the private sector in high-risk R&D. Persistent underrepresentation of Indian firms in global innovation rankings reflects a missing industrial policy focus on Schumpeterian creative destruction, without which India risks being confined to low-value segments of GVCs. In Liu Cixin's 2008 science fiction novel, The Three-Body Problem, the world gets paralysed by the sudden collapse of scientific progress. Stagnation is the real nightmare. It's not fiction any more. For India, the risk isn't that we fail. It's that we're too comfortable even to try. Innovation can't be outsourced. If there's a gap between what scientists are doing and what businesses need, then companies must invest in R&D, collaborate with academia, and shape research. If the private sector stays disengaged, we'll keep watching others lead. We just aren't paranoid enough.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - Washington's science cuts are a gift to Beijing
Today, China is an innovation powerhouse, overtaking the U.S. in critical technology sectors, including advanced manufacturing, consumer drones and electric vehicles. China's gains should stir Washington to intensify its own efforts to strengthen science and technology development in the U.S. But recent proposals to cut federal research and development funding and reduce personnel at federal science agencies would do the opposite, undermining the U.S. innovation advantage over China. The stakes for U.S. innovation policy are high. Whereas a decade ago top American experts argued that China's political system precluded innovation, all indicators suggest that today, China is a more agile, savvy, and well-resourced technological competitor than ever before. In Nature's rankings of global research organizations, China is responsible for an ever-increasing share of STEM publications in prestigious journals. Chinese companies are leaders in various emerging technologies: CATL in advanced batteries, DeepSeek in AI, and Huawei in 5G, for example. Across a variety of metrics for innovation — including STEM graduates, patents and R&D spending — China is catching up to the U.S. For decades, Beijing has made reducing the technological disparity between China and the United States a central policy goal. To close this gap, Beijing has repeatedly implemented reforms to more closely fashion China's science and technology institutions after those of the United States. In 1986, for example, China established the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the inspiration for which came from the U.S. National Science Foundation. In 2010, this Chines agency created a biomedical research division modeled on the U.S. National Institutes of Health. And in 2014, the it introduced 'indirect costs' into its grant administration to better support the development of Chinese research institutions, something it learned from the NIH and other U.S. science agencies. Beyond reforms to China's basic research ecosystem, Beijing has invested tremendous resources in an effort to replicate key features of the U.S. innovation ecosystem. Over the last two decades, the Chinese government has increased government expenditures on research and development ten-fold, to support the development of universities, research institutes, and technology companies that can compete with their American counterparts. Recognizing that the U.S. university system and commercial ecosystem make it a far more attractive destination for the world's top scholars and entrepreneurs, the Chinese government has sponsored recruitment programs like the Thousand Talents Plan. To offset the strength of U.S. financial markets, Beijing approved the establishment of the STAR market, a NASDAQ-style stock exchange designed to help Chinese technology companies raise capital. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, China's actions confirm that the U.S. innovation ecosystem remains a core strength in the technological competition between Washington and Beijing — one that the United States should not give away willingly. But the U.S. innovation advantage over China is eroding. U.S. federal support for science and technology development has failed to keep pace with China's rapid progress over the last quarter-century. Over the last month, Trump administration officials have begun to implement a series of policies that, absent additional, parallel measures to bolster support for American science, could undermine the White House's objective of advancing U.S. leadership in critical and emerging technologies. The National Science Foundation dismissed 10 percent of its staff on Tuesday and announced plans to lay off up to half of the agency's staff by May. Over the last week, NASA laid off 10 percent of its workforce, and the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration dismissed nearly 2,000 employees. NIH has proposed capping the reimbursement rate for indirect costs on NIH grants at 15 percent. Indirect costs help pay for a wide range of costs, including the upkeep of lab facilities and shared core facilities, procuring necessary chemicals and paying utility bills, for example. These policies are already hurting U.S. science — top universities are scaling back graduate student admissions and pausing new hires in response to the NIH funding freeze. These measures are only the latest in a trend of weakening U.S. investment in science. Federal research and development funding as a percentage of GDP is at a 25-year low, and last year the NSF's budget was cut by 8 percent. In the U.S., private industry — not the federal government — is responsible for an increasing share of research and development funding. While important, industry research tends to focus on projects with clear, immediate commercial applications, whereas federal funding often supports high-risk research with high-reward potential. While reforms targeting inefficiencies within federal agencies are necessary, the Trump administration should weigh these cuts against their potential impacts on long-term U.S. science and technology competitiveness. U.S. federal agencies are instrumental in promoting the United States' innovation advantage over China. The internet, GPS and CRISPR are just a few examples of critical technologies that were originally developed with support from federal agencies. Federal funding is also indispensable for U.S. universities, a powerful tool for U.S. technological competitiveness. The U.S. university system simultaneously advances cutting-edge research, drives technology commercialization and trains future generations of researchers and technology entrepreneurs. American universities also attract many of the world's most talented young people to the country, the vast majority of whom are highly motivated to stay in the country after graduating. Global leadership in critical and emerging technologies hinges on scientific talent. Here, Washington also plays a critical role. Federal funding, over half of which comes from NIH and NSF, supports 83,000 graduate students in science and engineering, including more than a quarter of all science and engineering doctoral students. The Department of Homeland Security facilitates study and work opportunities for talented individuals from around the world, granting visas and issuing green cards to allow non-U.S. citizens to study and work in the U.S. Policies that cut U.S. funding for research or directives that limit talent inflows will almost certainly undermine future scientific progress. To be sure, reforms are needed to keep up with the pace of China's advancements in science and technology fields. For example, barriers to commercialization continue to slow technology transfer from universities to industry. Moreover, Congress's annual budget cycle is ill-suited to fund ambitious, large-scale science projects that are implemented over many years. Taking a page from China's playbook, Washington should play a stronger, more proactive role in channeling investment towards high-priority technologies critical for national security. Regardless of the solutions, one thing is clear: Without sustained federal support, the United States will continue to lose ground to China. U.S. policymakers must avoid this own goal and instead embrace a long-term vision for promoting the U.S. innovation advantage amidst sustained technological competition with China. Cole McFaul is a research analyst at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
