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Is China becoming Europe’s top science partner amid an American brain drain?

As the United States experiences a brain drain, Europe is emerging as a key research partner for China as both benefit from an influx of…

By Samantha Johnson / May 16, 2026
As the United States experiences a brain drain, Europe is emerging as a key research partner for China as both benefit from an influx of young scientists from America.
Rapid changes in geopolitics have brought “massive changes in the global flow of talent”, according to Patrick Cramer, the president of Germany’s Max Planck Society, a leading research body in Europe.

“These are exactly the questions that I think about all day,” Cramer said during an interview in Shenzhen in April.

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“One trigger is the new administration in the United States [which has] changed visa regulations, science funding and, for example, attacked Earth system science – certain fields of research have become difficult,” he said.

“But there is another trigger – the rise of China. There is more money in China, so China is building more institutions and there are more academic jobs available.”

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He said global conflicts including wars meant “people sometimes are in a country where they have difficulties doing their work because they cannot think clearly or recruit young people because it is an unsuitable situation”.

Many of those people who would normally go to the US are now going to different places in the world

Patrick Cramer, Max Planck Society

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