I worked for a lab ran by a Chinese national at an Ivy when I was in graduate school. He would go on frequent trips to China touring major Chinese universities. He was something of a celebrity. He did not do this at US universities FWIW.
He had a pipeline and dedicated spots in our lab for Chinese graduate students who wanted to do a "postdoc" in the US. He was talking to one of his non-Chinese postdocs (with me present) who was considering taking a tenure-track faculty position at a university. He says, "You don't want to work there." She says, "Why do you say that?". He says, "The majority of students there are white. You won't get any quality students."
On another occasion, I was speaking with a S. Korean member of the lab who was well recognized at our university and in the field. He said to me, "When I first got here, I was bullied heavily. I was told: Koreans are stupid. Koreans are lazy. At least you're better than the white students."
This is all anecdote. But I personally saw that a lot of what we learned, discovered, developed, or otherwise worked on in our lab was taken on the road to share with Chinese Universities. I never once learned of something that was brought back to help us. I was told by a couple postdocs, actually, not to trust papers published by Chinese journals unless the same finding was corroborated by a non-mainland journal.
We did not share this kind of information very frequently or at that kind of volume with any other lab or university in the US. As a matter of fact, when I discovered a variation of a protocol that was much more effective and when I also had some preliminary findings on my own research and wanted to share this with another lab in the US that was doing similar work (to help them, and to learn from them - respectively). I was told I couldn't even tell them I was working on this because we didn't want them to beat us to publish.
Science is supposed to be about collaboration. It shouldn't know borders. But I have never seen such shady, unethical practice. When I raised concerns, I was told to keep my head down. I'm not in that field anymore... and it's always just a "Can you believe this happens..." story that I like to tell. But every time I see reports like this... I expect to read my old PI's name. Odd stuff.
He had a pipeline and dedicated spots in our lab for Chinese graduate students who wanted to do a "postdoc" in the US. He was talking to one of his non-Chinese postdocs (with me present) who was considering taking a tenure-track faculty position at a university. He says, "You don't want to work there." She says, "Why do you say that?". He says, "The majority of students there are white. You won't get any quality students."
On another occasion, I was speaking with a S. Korean member of the lab who was well recognized at our university and in the field. He said to me, "When I first got here, I was bullied heavily. I was told: Koreans are stupid. Koreans are lazy. At least you're better than the white students."
This is all anecdote. But I personally saw that a lot of what we learned, discovered, developed, or otherwise worked on in our lab was taken on the road to share with Chinese Universities. I never once learned of something that was brought back to help us. I was told by a couple postdocs, actually, not to trust papers published by Chinese journals unless the same finding was corroborated by a non-mainland journal.
We did not share this kind of information very frequently or at that kind of volume with any other lab or university in the US. As a matter of fact, when I discovered a variation of a protocol that was much more effective and when I also had some preliminary findings on my own research and wanted to share this with another lab in the US that was doing similar work (to help them, and to learn from them - respectively). I was told I couldn't even tell them I was working on this because we didn't want them to beat us to publish.
Science is supposed to be about collaboration. It shouldn't know borders. But I have never seen such shady, unethical practice. When I raised concerns, I was told to keep my head down. I'm not in that field anymore... and it's always just a "Can you believe this happens..." story that I like to tell. But every time I see reports like this... I expect to read my old PI's name. Odd stuff.