Update | China must woo top tech talent turned off by Trump, says Baidu chief
Baidu chief Robin Li says China must be more welcoming to foreigners if the nation is to draw the best tech minds and challenge Silicon Valley
The billionaire chief of Baidu, which is often referred to as China’s Google, has urged Beijing to further ease visa restrictions to attract overseas workers, some of whom might be put off by US President Donald Trump’s restrictive immigration policies.
“China should be more open in its immigration policy,” Robin Li Yanhong, Baidu chief executive and a delegate of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, said at a panel of the ongoing two sessions in Beijing on Monday. “Chinese companies have made a lot of effort to attract overseas talent to work in China. But most of the talent we attract are overseas Chinese,” he said. “In the meantime, Silicon Valley has gathered top tech talent from across the globe.”
Li said the newly elected US president offered the Chinese mainland “a great opportunity” to attract skilled workers. But domestic technology companies needed the government to liberalise immigration policy if the firms were to compete against Silicon Valley and help turn innovation into a driver of growth, he said.
According to the latest figures of the US Department of Homeland Security, there were 13.1 million green card holders in the United States at the start of 2013, almost two-thirds of whom had acquired permanent residency in the previous 13 years.
The mainland began giving out green cards in 2004, but just 7,356 foreigners have been given permanent residency in the first 10 years of the scheme, despite an estimated 600,000 people from overseas working there. Last year, 1,576 foreigners were made permanent residents, an increase of 163 per cent over the previous year.
