Study abroad in 1970s changed life course for 81-year-old

Watching the recent TV series featuring China's former leader Deng Xiaoping and the country's historic reform, Liu Baicheng could not help shedding tears.

Liu, who was among the 52 students sent to the United States to study with China's first group of visiting scholars, relived the life-changing moments triggered by Deng's efforts 35 years ago.

"The two years of study not only changed my own life but also led me on a path to science and research," Liu said.

Liu, now 81, would lead his team to establish a field that laid the foundation for China's manufacturing industry.

According to the China Scholarship Council, since China's opening-up in 1978, the number of government-funded students abroad has exceeded 167,000 in 100 countries.

Liu remembers his awe at seeing hundreds of cars zipping along an expressway as he landed in New York in 1979.

"At that time, cars were scarce in China. Even the busiest shopping area, Wangfujing in downtown Beijing, became quiet after 7 pm," he recalled.

China's per-capita gross domestic product was less than $200 in 1978, one-fiftieth of the level in the US at the time.

The "cultural revolution" (1966-76) disrupted much of China's educational system, so most visiting scholars sent abroad were middle-aged.

When Liu arrived, he was 45 years old and had never seen a computer. So when he witnessed his landlord's third-grade son playing with an Apple computer, he was astonished.

He decided to learn FORTRAN, a premier computer programming language at the time, working 12 hours a day.

After studying in Wisconsin, Liu went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before returning to China.

"There is no place like home," he said.

But many students today choose to stay abroad.

According to the blue paper on overseas study released in 2012, of the 2.2 million students studying abroad from 1978 to 2011, only 817,000, or 36.5 percent, returned to China.

Yang Di, who began work at ExxonMobil in the US after graduating from MIT in 2009, said one of the attractions of the US is that it encourages innovation.

"Although China has notable oil giants, they still have a long way to go to cultivate technical innovation," he said.

President Xi Jinping urged authorities last month to work out concrete policies for innovation-driven development.

But although China provides good incentives for returnees, "many families have decided to send only the husbands back, leaving wives and children abroad," said Chao Xing, mother of a 2-year-old.

She said wives and children would rather live in a developed nation for the cleaner air, better education and safer food.