ABSTRACT
Beginning in 1979, the government of the People's Republic of China, hoping to catch up with Western science and technology, decided for the first time since 1949 to send large numbers of students and scholars to the West to study. While significant numbers of people returned before 1986, after 1987 the ratio of returnees to those leaving dropped significantly. After the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen incident and the U.S. government's decision to allow any mainland Chinese who was then in the United States to apply for permanent residency, the probability that people would return dropped even more precipitously.
