Die Tatsachen widersprechen den Bedenken des Wirtschaftsministers. Siehe den Artikel unten aus der New York Times vom 19. April:

Brain Drain in Technology Found Useful for Both Sides

New York Times, April 19, 2002

By Matt Richtel

SAN FRANCISCO, April 18 -

Hong Lu, born in Taiwan, raised in Japan, educated at Berkeley and made wealthy in Silicon Valley, founded a company several years ago to sell telecommunications equipment in mainland China. His intention was to take advantage of his multicultural expertise, aim at a growing market and, incidentally, spread the entrepreneurial culture in Asia.

He did. He gave his employees in China stock options.

"At the beginning, people were very suspicious," said Mr. Lu, a co-founder of UTStarcom, a company with its headquarters in Alameda, Calif., and its operations in Beijing. "They said, `Don't give me paper, give me money.' After we went public, they said, `Don't give me raises, give me more options.' "

A survey to be published Friday suggests that it is common for immigrants who have become a staple of Silicon Valley's growth to export their experience - and Northern California's entrepreneurial culture - back to their homelands.

The survey, paid for by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonprofit private group that studies issues affecting Californians, and undertaken by a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, found that immigrant entrepreneurs and professionals, in particular from China and India, increasingly are meeting with government officials and consulting with companies in their native countries. The survey found that 18 percent of the immigrants surveyed had invested in their own start-ups or in venture funds in their homelands.

The survey seeks to illuminate the complex labor ties and economic relationship between Silicon Valley and East Asia - a relationship that has sometimes been criticized as disproportionately benefiting the United States. Some economists, industry analysts and foreign officials have lamented what they call a brain drain from Asian countries - with computer programmers and experts flocking to Silicon Valley for higher pay and a better standard of living.

The Berkeley researcher who conducted the study, AnnaLee Saxenian, a professor of regional economic development, said the data suggests there is a "brain circulation."

"Immigrant entrepreneurs are being infected with the Silicon Valley disease," she said, referring to the drive to start ventures. "Then they are exporting it."

The group that Ms. Saxenian focused on in her survey of 2,300 people primarily consisted of Chinese and Indian immigrants who, she said, had extensive experience in Silicon Valley and held higher-education degrees. Ms. Saxenian said that 40 percent of the immigrants surveyed had helped arrange business contacts in their countries, and 30 percent had met with government officials in their homelands.

She found that 76 percent of Indian immigrants and 73 percent of Chinese professionals would consider starting a venture in their countries.

Doug Henton, president of Collaborative Economics, a regional economic strategy group based in Mountain View, Calif., in Silicon Valley, said the survey findings jibed with his observations in recent years. He said one common theme was that Silicon Valley served as the center of research and development and a business incubation center for start-ups, and that entrepreneurs then sought to build manufacturing plants in Asia.

Ms. Saxenian has argued that not just manufacturing is being exported, but also ideas - specifically a culture of entrepreneurship.

Mr. Lu, of UTStarcom, said the exporting of Silicon Valley culture has been a byproduct of the growth of his company, which has much of its manufacturing, research and development and day-to-day operations in mainland China. For instance, Mr. Lu said that in the mid-1990's, when the company was beginning, he had to educate employees in China about the start-up mentality, notably that it was not just desirable, but possible, to take on huge, often state-owned, competitors.

"Companies like Apple, Palm and other start-ups came from nothing and are competing," Mr. Lu said. His company has tried to disseminate to its employees the culture that drove those companies.

www.nytimes.com/2002/04/19/technology/