The success of the program in
recruiting U.S.-trained scientists back to China has been viewed with concern from the U.S., with a June 2018 report from the
National Intelligence Council declaring an
underlying motivation of the program to be “to facilitate the legal and illicit transfer of US technology, intellectual property and know-how” to China.
In
May 2020, the
FBI arrested a former researcher at the Cleveland Clinic for failing to disclose ties to the Thousand Talents Program.
In
June 2020, it was reported that the
National Institutes of Health had investigations into the behavior of
189 scientists. In November 2020,
Song Guo Zheng, a TTP participant, pled guilty to
making false claims to the FBI about his ties to the Chinese government during his employment at
Ohio State University.
In
November 2019, the
US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs held an open hearing on the China's Talent Recruitment Plans, including the TTP, and called the programs a
threat to national security. The report from the hearing cited TTP contracts as violating research values, TTP members willfully failing to disclose their membership to their home institutions, and cited numerous cases against TTP members for
theft of intellectual property and fraud.
One TTP member stole proprietary defense information on U.S. military jet engines. The report indicated that
"TTP targets U.S.-based researchers and scientists, regardless of ethnicity or citizenship, who focus on or have access to cutting-edge research and technology."In
August 2020,
Canadian Security Intelligence Service warned both Canadian universities and Canadian research institutions of the TTP, saying that it
recruited researchers and scientists around the world to persuade them to share their research and technology — either
willingly or by coercion.
The program grew out of the
"Talent Superpower Strategy" of the
17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2007. The
Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and
State Council of the People's Republic of China elevated the program in 2010 to become the top-level award given through China's National Talent Development Plan to strengthen innovation and international competitiveness within China. In 2019, the program was re-branded as the "National High-end Foreign Experts Recruitment Plan." The
United Front Work Department's
Western Returned Scholars Association is the official representative body for program participants.
1000 Talent Plan professorship is the highest academic honor awarded by the State Council, analogous to the top-level award given by the
Ministry of Education. The program includes two mechanisms: resources for permanent recruitment into Chinese academia, and resources for short-term appointments that typically
target international experts who have full-time employment at a leading international university or research laboratory.
The program has three categories:
- Innovative 1000 Talents plan (Long term / Short term) – for Chinese scholars below 55 years of age
- Foreign 1000 Talents plan (Long term / Short term) – for foreigners only below 55 years of age
- Young scholar 1000 Talents plan or Overseas Young Talents Project of China — for those below 40 years of age
The program has been praised for
recruiting top international talent to China, but also criticized for being
ineffective at retaining the talent.
Conflict of interest and fraud concerns: Although the program has successfully attracted top international talent to China, its efficacy in retaining these talented individuals has been questioned, with many of the most talented scientists willing to spend short periods in China but unwilling to abandon their tenured positions at major Western universities. Additionally,
some Thousand Talents Plan Professors have reported fraud in the program including misappropriated grant funding, poor accommodations, and violations of research ethics.
Dismissals due to undisclosed connections to the TTP have taken place. Individuals who receive either of China's two top academic awards, the Thousand Talents Professorship and the
Changjiang (Yangtze River) Scholar award, have become
targets for recruitment by China's wealthiest universities so frequently that the Ministry of Education issued notices in both 2013 and 2017 discouraging Chinese universities from recruiting away top talent from one another [
poaching].