Abstract:

The mobility and clustering of international academic talent is changing fundamentally. Under the change of global “center-periphery” system, “clustering talent through international education” and “clustering talent through international academic professional opportunity” have emerged as two major approaches to attracting and assembling international talent. Based on the analysis of overseas returnees and foreign scholars in “double first-class universities” in China, the study finds that China has established the brain circulation relations with the center countries of world academic system. International education of international students, and reversed returning of overseas Chinese undergraduates have become the weak approaches to “clustering talent through international education”. Overseas Chinese academic returning to China and inflow of foreign international scholars have respectively been the weak and strong approaches to “clustering talent through international academic professional opportunity”. It is suggested that conductive institutional measures need to be implemented so as to lure more scholars working in China, and the pace of building up the regional higher education hub and global talent center should be sped up.

Key words: center-periphery, university, international academic talent, clustering