China struggles to recruit foreign AI researchers even as it wins the domestic talent race

China has built AI labs that the rest of the world now watches closely. DeepSeek and Moonshot have become internationally known names. The numbers behind China’s talent shift A study published by Carnegie China in September 2026 found that China hosted 41% of the world’s top AI researchers in 2025. The study measured elite status by participation in NeurIPS, one of the field’s most prestigious research conferences. That share was 27% in 2022. The US moved in the opposite direction, sliding from 46% to 34% over the same stretch. The research points to two forces driving the reversal. Leading Chinese firms are offering competitive pay, while restrictive US visa policies have pushed researchers back to China after time spent overseas. Retention at the undergraduate level tells a similar story. The share of Chinese undergraduate degree holders who stayed in the country rose to 69% in 2025, up from 57% in 2022. DeepSeek offers a sharp case study. An analysis by Stanford’s Hoover Institution and HAI found that 53.5% of authors affiliated with the lab had never worked or studied outside China. Among DeepSeek researchers who did gain US experience, more than 70% eventually came home. The s...