Sheng Huizhen's life story is typical of immigrants   who have succeeded in America. After getting her PhD in biochemistry, she got a job as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health. She got a green card, bought a house in Maryland and worked her way up all the time. But then she moved back to China. A law in America stopped the use of public money for research on human embryos  . This prevented her from doing the kind of work she wanted to do. The Chinese government attracts her to return with $75,000 for a new lab. She could use the lab to do her research. " Maybe because of the culture, the public in China are friendlier to the research," said Sheng, 55 , whose family remains in the United States. Attracted by support and a scientific environment more open to certain types of experiments, China's long-lost scientists are coming back. Besides, China announced that it would double its research-and-development spending by 2012, to about $69 billion. The returning scientists are very happy about that. In recent years, more than 275,000 have come back. Many of these "sea turtles" , as they are known, have returned with degrees in science or engineering. They are going to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where 81 percent of the members are returning scientists. Fifty thousand of the returning scientists are starting their own companies, according to China's Ministry of Education, pushing the development in science. What can be learned about returning scientists?
Most of them are working in Ministry of Education. They are satisfied with the scientific environment in China. Half of them came back to start companies. They are seriously short of money for research at home.