H-1B visa fee hike and call for Indians to return: What India can learn from China's efforts to repatriate its high-skilled talent

Indian high-skilled professionals are facing a moment of reckoning as the US hiked the much-used H-1B visa fees to $100,000. The anger and frustration have evolved into a call for Indians to return, to build back at home. One country that has succeeded in repatriating its high-tech professionals is China. Over the past decades, it has used incentives as well as punishments to bring back the Chinese from foreign lands to start innovations and businesses in China. Many of the top tech startup CEOs had been abroad at some point in their lives. But now they are building back at home, helping China emerge as a global innovation hub that currently challenges the US and the West.

How China reversed brain drain

China is home to tech giants like Huawei, ByteDance (owner of TikTok), BYD and DJI. In past decades, a meticulous strategy combining generous incentives with subtle, and sometimes coercive, punishments, was used by the Chinese government to bring back its high-skilled tech talent.

China wants its brightest minds, especially those educated or working in the West, to return and contribute to building China’s domestic innovation ecosystem.

The approach combined financial carrots with legal, social, and political sticks.

Thousand Talents: How China’s talent repatriation campaign offered world-class incentives

Scientists and entrepreneurs were promised grants of up to ¥200 million, preferential access to housing, healthcare, subsidies, and priority in securing venture capital. Programmes like the Thousand Talents Plan (TTP), the Young Thousand Talents (YTT), and the Qiming Plan aggressively recruited top-tier Chinese professionals abroad, especially in strategic fields like artificial intelligence, semiconductors, biotech, and electric vehicles.

With the state offering rent subsidies, tax breaks, and startup support, cities like Shenzhen and Shanghai became magnets for Chinese returnees.
Startup incubators like Zhongguancun in Beijing provided infrastructure and mentorship, while institutions like Tsinghua Holdings fostered deep integration between academia and enterprise.

The result? Chinese returnees now make up a reported 70 per cent of Shenzhen’s tech workforce and have founded 80 per cent of the country’s AI startups.

China also streamlined its immigration and residency systems to support this return flow of emigrants.

High-end talent visas, fast-tracked household registration known as 'hukou', and priority schooling and housing for families made it easier for skilled professionals to resettle in major innovation hubs.

Disincentives designed to make staying abroad increasingly unattractive

State-sponsored students, particularly those funded by the China Scholarship Council (CSC), were bound by contracts requiring them to return to China. Failing this would lead to penalties that include repayment of full tuition and living costs that run up to $100,000, or even legal action.
This made the price of staying abroad prohibitively high for many Chinese expats.

The Chinese Social Credit System also played a role. Those who failed to return or started 'unauthorised ventures' abroad could be blacklisted. This then led to restrictions in their access to credit, travel, or even schooling for their children back in China.
Families of non-returnees also faced social stigma, amplified by state media campaigns promoting national service and loyalty.

Moreover, returnees who attempted to collaborate with or join foreign tech firms often risked violating Chinese National Security and Cybersecurity laws. Sharing sensitive technology with foreign entities was criminalised, and data localisation was required for Chinese firms.

In effect, these curbs created high barriers for overseas engagement for Chinese tech professionals.

Losing citizenship and access to startup ecosystem: Hidden cost of not returning for Chinese

Chinese citizens holding foreign passports were further disincentivised by the country's ban on dual citizenship.

Choosing to remain abroad meant losing access to China’s domestic startup ecosystem, government funding, and even property rights.

This led many to forgo foreign nationality in order to keep their foothold in the Chinese market.

China's strong state control over its startup ecosystem

Companies that did not align with state-defined strategic goals, especially post-2018 tech tensions with the US, faced the withdrawal of subsidies, funding, or market access.

Hundreds of ventures that failed to deliver results were excluded from major incubators and denied participation in government contracts.

China also ramped up investment in strategic areas, such as the $48 billion Big Fund III.

Launched in 2024, this financial initiative funnelled capital into chip manufacturing.

Programmes like the Qiming Plan gave semiconductor firms generous funding.

Staggering results: Millions of Chinese return

As per data from 2023, more than one million Chinese students have returned annually.
Some global brands emerged from this reverse migration.

For instance, DJI now dominates the global drone market with a 70 per cent share.

BYD accounts for 20 per cent of global electric vehicle sales.

SenseTime, a major AI player, has reached a valuation of $3 billion.
China now ranks first globally in patent filings and accounts for 30 per cent of global unicorn value.

Reverse brain drain helped China become innovation hub

China has not only reversed its brain drain. It used its talent as a lever to assert technological sovereignty and economic resilience amid global decoupling trends and protectionism from America.

China blended opportunity and obligation, incentives and punishments, in its long march towards self-reliance in the technology sector. It is a controversial, yet powerful model for national innovation.

The global tech race is intensifying. For Indian policymakers, China's example underscores a broader truth: attracting talent is no longer just about offering a better salary or lab.

It is about building an entire ecosystem that makes leaving the homeland the harder—not the easier—choice, and returning an attractive option.

India can avoid the punishment-disincentive part of this system, and concentrate on the incentives and ecosystem-building aspects of the Chinese model.

Because it is high time.