The Nature Index 2016, released last week, points out that China is the world’s second largest contributor to high-quality scientific research papers, right behind the United States. That means better salaries and other financial benefits for China’s research teams.
The background to this increase in top scientists’ salaries is China’s enormous spending on research and development. China government have invested 1.4 trillion yuan on the sector last year, more than the entire GDP of New Zealand.
Things changed considerably: in 2010 the average Chinese scientist earned less than US$40,000 a year. Their counterparts in the United States, meanwhile, made an average of almost US$80,000. To day, the average annual starting salary for a professor returning from overseas to a major university in China is about US$120,000, according to a study by researchers at the Science and Technology Talent Centre under the Ministry of Science and Technology.