Haigui or “sea turtles” are a special part of China’s far-flung diaspora. A term that describes Chinese nationals who study or work overseas before returning to the motherland, sea turtles have become huge contributors to China’s fast-growing tech industry, from top tech executives to VCs.

But how do overseas Chinese view the pros and cons of staying or returning to China? And what motivates haigui, especially those in high-tech industries, to come back?

In this episode, we talk to a few sea turtles and US-based Chinese AI engineers to understand their experience and perspective of China vs. US tech industry, and what it says about China’s race to become a global tech leader.

Some topics that will be covered in this episode:

• China’s 996 work culture
• The bamboo ceiling
• Compensation at US vs Chinese tech firms
• The breakdown of barriers between Chinese and US tech

Guests:

• Mike Lei, CTO of Mobvoi, a Beijing-based artificial intelligence company, whose investors include Google, Sequoia Capital, and ZhenFund.
• Ji Zhanglong, a Silicon Valley-based machine learning engineer at Facebook.
• Andy Liu, founder of Futureform, a Beijing-based design agency that specializes in product and UX design for AI related products.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.