Governance of High-Skilled Migration : the Case of Shenzhen

Popova Svetlana Mikhailovna ORCID: 0000-0002-1348-4492 PhD in Politics Leading Research Associate, Institute for Demographic Research of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences 119333, Russia, Moscow, Fotieva str., 6, office 1 sv-2002-1@yandex.ru Other publications by this author     Yanik Andrey Aleksandrovich ORCID: 0000-0002-1599-6280 PhD in Technical Science Leading Research Associate, Institute for Demographic Research of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences 119333, Russia, Moscow, Fotieva str., 6, office 1 aa.yanick@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Chzhan Chzhan' ORCID: 0000-0001-8366-9807 PhD in Politics Lecturer; Russian-Chinese Center for Comparative Law; Shenzhen MSU-BIT University Office 657, Guojidaxueyuanlu St., office 657, Shenzhen, 518172, China yinyh@szu.edu.cn

Introduction

For decades, the People's Republic of China has been purposefully and actively pursuing a policy of attracting talented specialists to modernize the economy and accelerate innovative development. The Chinese experience can be useful to Russian scientists and practitioners in the context of finding solutions to improve the effectiveness of migration policy.

It seems that one of the promising sources of data for analysis is the experience of Shenzhen, where the city government closely monitors how measures to attract highly qualified specialists are implemented, has the right to make independent decisions to achieve the strategic goals set by the Chinese leadership and can quickly adjust its policy based on the results obtained. Long-term monitoring of the processes taking place in Shenzhen makes it possible to trace the cause-and-effect relationships between the dynamically changing policy of the city and its results in real time.

The sources for this work are data from the official socio-economic and demographic statistics of the People's Republic of China (in particular, the China Census resource, the results of the Seventh National Population Census (2020), etc.), Guangdong Province and the Municipal People's Government of Shenzhen (in particular, materials from the Shenzhen Government Online resource, publications by the Office of the National Bureau of Statistics in Shenzhen), political and legal documents at the national and municipal levels, international statistics (for example, the World Population Review), information on the websites of Chinese-foreign joint universities and other relevant Internet resources, as well as scientific publications from the period 2015-2025.

To solve the tasks set, observation methods, chronological and comparative analysis of documents and data, monitoring of program implementation, and various approaches to evaluating policy effectiveness were used.

Why is China's experience interesting?

The example of China is interesting for studying the experience of scientifically based migration management of highly qualified resources in order to stimulate the socio-economic development of specific territories and the country as a whole.

It is important that the migration policy of the PRC is integrated into the general logic of the country's socio-economic development strategy, and the management of migration processes itself is one of the elements of an integrated system of state management of the economy and social progress, which uses strategic planning methods and a programmatic approach.

China embarked on a policy of openness and reform in 1978.

The policy of attracting and using international talents, developed to accelerate the economic modernization and innovative development of the PRC, is an integral part of the state's overall policy of training and developing personnel for the country's new economy.

In May 2002, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (hereinafter referred to as the CPC Central Committee) adopted the National Action Plan for the Development of a High–quality Workforce (2002-2005).

The task of talent development was included in the CPC Constitution and the report of the 17th CPC Congress in 2007 as one of the three main strategies (the "Talent Superpower Strategy") and in the report of the 19th CPC Congress in 2017 as one of the seven strategies for completing the process of building a medium-income society.

In 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping set a new strategic goal – China should become a center of global talent. This goal is an integral part of the country's overall development strategy to "strive to build a modernized socialist state," which the Chinese President outlined in his report at the opening of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of China (October 16, 2022), and the CPC adopted a corresponding strategic plan.

As part of the phased achievement of the set targets (by 2025, to ensure the attractiveness of the country for leading scientists; by 2030, to attract domestic and foreign highly qualified promising specialists to the country's priority technological areas; by 2035, to create competitive advantages for China as part of the global struggle for advanced scientific and technological personnel), new, more targeted and selective programs for attracting talents and directing them to those points of growth (geographical, economic) that can have the greatest effect on the development of the country in the future.

So, in 2023, China adopted a new large-scale Qiming program (Chinese: Enlightenment), which aims to attract promising creative specialists specifically in the advanced areas of technology sector development (advanced manufacturing and space technologies, artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, new semiconductor materials, energy conservation and new energy, finance, medicine and biomedicine).

The authorities of large administrative-territorial units (provinces, districts, special administrative regions, cities of central and provincial subordination, etc.) adopt their own programs to implement the strategic objectives set by the central government bodies of the People's Republic of China.

Why is the Shenzhen experience interesting?

The experience of Shenzhen is interesting for studying approaches to managing migration of highly qualified personnel in order to solve problems of socio-economic development for many reasons.

1. The pace of socio-economic development of the city makes it possible to observe changes practically "in real time", which provides more opportunities for identifying and assessing cause-and-effect relationships between the actions of the managing entity and changes in the management object.

Shenzhen is the youngest city in China.

Unlike Beijing (one of the oldest cities in the world), founded in 1045 BC, or Shanghai, whose land history has been known since the 5th century BC, Shenzhen was founded on the basis of a small border town in March 1979. In August 1980, it was transformed into the first special economic zone in the People's Republic of China, the development of which was actively supported by the country's leadership.

In August 2019, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council of the People's Republic of China approved the "Guidelines for supporting Shenzhen in creating an Experimental Demonstration Zone of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics," which set new strategic objectives for the city and provided appropriate opportunities.

The leadership of the country has set large–scale tasks for Shenzhen - to become an exemplary city in such areas as high-quality development; rule of law management; modern urban civilization; an example of human well-being; the vanguard of sustainable development. The ambitions of the city are global in nature: the local authorities aim to transform Shenzhen into an advanced manufacturing center, a center of technological innovation, a consumer center, a logistics center and a financial center with global influence.

According to the approved plans containing the main stages and targets, in 2025, Shenzhen should become one of the world's leading cities in terms of economic strength and quality of development, reaching the world level in terms of investment in research and development, the potential for industrial innovation, the level of public services and the quality of the environment. This stage is necessary to create the innovation potential necessary to achieve the standards of world leaders.

By 2035, Shenzhen should become the global capital of innovation and entrepreneurship, whose economy is steadily developing according to an innovative model.

And by 2050, Shenzhen must achieve its next ambitious goal - to join the group of the most competitive, innovative and influential cities in the world.

As highly qualified personnel play a key role in innovative development, the Shenzhen Government is making constant and great efforts to improve migration management and attract international and local talents to meet its economic and wealth growth challenges.

2. Shenzhen has a unique demographic profile.

Shenzhen is a city of migrants, youth and women. The number of residents of Shenzhen has grown more than 260 times over the past 40 years (in 1950, just over 3,000 people lived in the future Shenzhen). At the time of the creation of the special economic zone (1980), there were less than 60 thousand people in the city. Since that time, the number of residents has been growing explosively. On average, every last five years, the population has increased by 1 million people (source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/cities ).

According to the World Population Review 2025, Shenzhen ranks 24th among the 822 largest cities in the world, with a population of 13 million 545 thousand people and an annual population growth rate of 1.75%. According to these indicators, Shenzhen is ahead of Moscow, but behind Shanghai (3rd place in the ranking of the largest cities in the world, 30.5 million inhabitants) and Beijing (8th place, 22.6 million inhabitants). (For reference: Tokyo remains the absolute leader of the rating with a population of 37 million people). Figure 1 shows the impressive growth rate of Shenzhen's population over the past 70 years.

Figure 1. Population growth in Shenzhen, according to the UN, thousand people.

Source: World Population Review. https://worldpopulationreview.com/cities/china/shenzhen (date of request: 08/15/2025).

Chinese sources show higher figures. Thus, according to the data of the Seventh National Population Census in Guangdong Province, published by the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Statistics in the spring of 2021, the population of Shenzhen in 2020 amounted to 17.56 million people (source: Shenzhen Daily. URL: https://www.sz.gov.cn/en_szgov/news/latest/content/post_8771774.html). And according to the China Census resource, in 2025, the number of residents of the city was almost 17.99 million people (source: Shenzhen City Population Data and Population Census data and Age Pyramid // China Census. URL: https://chinacensus.org/prefecture/shenzhen-city-population-data-and-population-census-data-and-age-pyramid).

As of June 1, 2025, more than 6.4 million men (47.6%) and more than 7.7 million women (52.4%) permanently reside in Shenzhen (source: Population of Shenzhen (China). URL: https://bdex.ru/naselenie/china/shenzhen/).

Thus, there are approximately 110 women per 100 men. This gender disparity is higher than the average in China, where there are fewer women than men – 95 women for every 100 men (48.76% versus 51.24% in the population structure) (source: Data from the Seventh National Population Census (2020) // Shenzhen Government Online. URL: https://www.sz.gov.cn/en_szgov/news/latest/content/post_8771774.html).

Shenzhen is a city of migrants. Their number in the population structure is 63.5% (Chinese Census data, 2020). Among the residents of the other largest cities of central subordination - Beijing and Shanghai - the proportion of migrants is significantly lower and amounts to 35.9 and 39.6%, respectively.

In Shenzhen, 2/3 of the migrants are internal migrants from other provinces of China. At first, internal migrants were represented mainly by the rural population, but gradually changes took place. On the one hand, thanks to the modernization of the city's economy and the creation of high-tech industries, highly qualified specialists from other regions began to arrive in Shenzhen. On the other hand, thanks to various urban programs to improve the quality of the workforce, internal rural migrants began to change their lifestyle and raise their level of education. Already in 2013, according to surveys, almost half of the internal migrants (49.5%), returning from Shenzhen to their native places, opened their own businesses ^[1].

Shenzhen is also known as the "city of youth" and even as the "city of young migrants." The average age of Shenzhen residents is approximately 32.5 years, which is significantly lower than the national average of 39.6 years (data from 2025). For comparison, the average age of the population of Beijing and Shanghai is 40.1 and 43.6 years, respectively.

In 2022, in the "Ranking of attractiveness of Chinese cities for people born after 1995," Shenzhen ranked second in China.

The number of people over the age of 60 in 2025 in Shenzhen was only 5.34% of the total population of the city, which is almost 2.8 times lower than the average for Guangdong Province (14.86%), which includes the city, and more than 4 times lower than the national average (22.04%). As for other major cities in China, the proportion of residents over 60 in Beijing is the same as the national average, and in Shanghai it is more than 18.7%. (Sources: Shenzhen City Population Data and Population Census data and Age Pyramid // China Census. URL: https://chinacensus.org/prefecture/shenzhen-city-population-data-and-population-census-data-and-age-pyramid; Guangdong province Population Data Population Census data and Age Pyramid // China Census. URL: https://chinacensus.org/province/guangdong-province-population-data-population-census-data; China Population Data and Population Census data // China Census. URL: https://chinacensus.org/china/china-population-data-population-census-data).

3. Shenzhen for a historically short period (just over 40 years) It has become a center of attraction for students, scientists and highly qualified specialists.

Shenzhen is interesting for studying the contribution of migration policy (first of all, talent policy) to the development of the economy also because today it has become a hub for leading universities. The role of academic migration has increased especially since the launch of the Plan to transform Shenzhen into a world–class city - a leader in innovative development.

By the time the special economic zone was established in 1980, there were no higher education institutions in Shenzhen. From 1980 to the end of the twentieth century, three universities appeared in Shenzhen: the small Shenzhen University of Radio and Television (now the Shenzhen Open University). (1980) and larger ones - Shenzhen University (1983) and Shenzhen Polytechnic University (1993).

Now the number of universities and colleges in Shenzhen has increased to 16, and the number of students has exceeded 190,000. Over the past ten years alone, a satellite campus (branch) of the Harbin Institute of Technology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shenzhen (based on a partnership between the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Shenzhen University), the Shenzhen campus of Sun Yat-sen University and MSU-PPI University in Shenzhen (based on a partnership between Lomonosov Moscow State University and Beijing Polytechnic Institute).

It is important that two of the 9 Chinese-foreign elite universities (providing the highest quality education in China) were established in Shenzhen. One of them, MSU-SPI University in Shenzhen, is the only Russian-Chinese university of this level in China and the world.

Thanks to the synergy of socio-economic development plans and talent attraction policies, the Shenzhen education sector is growing rapidly (see Table 1).

Table 1. The state and pace of development of the Shenzhen education sector in 2022

Source: Statistical Bulletin of the National Economic and Social Development of Shenzhen 2022. July 27, 2023.

As of 2024, only the 9 largest universities in Shenzhen have more than 133,000 students (including undergraduates, undergraduates, and doctoral students) (see Table 2).

Table 2. Number of students at the largest universities in Shenzhen, 2024

Source: Authors' calculations based on the official websites of leading higher education institutions in Shenzhen based on admission results in 2024.

According to the Seventh National Census (2020), Shenzhen ranked first in terms of the level of education of the population: out of every 100,000 inhabitants, 28,849 people have higher education. The other two largest cities of Guangdong Province, Guangzhou and Zhuhai, took the second and third places, gaining 27,277 and 25,752 people, respectively, for every 100,000 inhabitants. These figures are significantly higher than the average in China, according to which 15,467 people per 100,000 inhabitants have higher education (source: Shenzhen Government Online. URL: https://www.sz.gov.cn/en_szgov/news/latest/content/post_8771774.html).

4. The experience of Shenzhen is useful for researching the impact of migration policy on economic change, as the economic and innovative development of the city is proceeding rapidly and showing impressive results, as evidenced by data from the Shenzhen Bureau of Statistics.

So, in 2024, Shenzhen's GDP reached 3.68 trillion yuan (the third largest in China) with a growth rate of 5.5% per year, which is comparable to Beijing and Shanghai, but a third higher than the national average (see Table 3).

The annual growth of the city's total foreign trade amounted to 5.9%, which is significantly higher than in Shanghai and Beijing. In the first half of 2025 alone, Shenzhen's exports totaled 1.31 trillion yuan and imports totaled 858.86 billion yuan. Private enterprises of the city became the main participants in this trade, accounting for 69.8% of the total volume.

Table 3. Indicators of economic growth of Shenzhen in comparison with Beijing and Shanghai

Source: Shenzhen Basics // Shenzhen Government Online. - https://www.sz.gov.cn/en_szgov/aboutsz/profile/content/post_11666623.html (date of request: 08/15/2025)

The GDP of the city of Shenzhen currently exceeds the GDP of more than 120 sovereign states (for comparison, some data are given in Table 4).

Table 4. GDP of Shenzhen and several countries of the world (in billions of US dollars) as of June 2025

Source and International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook (April - 2025). URL: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/april (accessed: 08/15/2025); GDP Indicators 2025 – Statistics Times.Com . June 5, 2025. - URL: https://statisticstimes.com/economy/gdp-indicators-2025.php (date of request: 08/15/2025).

The indicators of the industries that provide the modern look of the Shenzhen economy are also changing dynamically. As an example, the data from the Shenzhen Bureau of Statistics for 2023 (Statistical Bulletin of the National Economic and Social Development of Shenzhen 2022. July 27, 2023).

The growth of key indicators of Shenzhen's industrial development in 2023 compared to 2022 was:

- automotive industry - by 89.7%;

- production of new energy vehicles - by 170.2%;

- production of chargers - by 32.6%;

- investments in high-tech production - by 56.3%;

- investments in the electronics and communication equipment manufacturing sector increased by 66.3% (source: Statistical Bulletin of the National Economic and Social Development of Shenzhen 2022. July 27, 2023).

Of no small importance is the fact that leading technology companies with international renown are based in Shenzhen, which contributes to the influx of talented specialists from the rest of the country and from around the world. We are talking, in particular, about companies such as Huawei, Tencent and Ping An.

Key areas of talent policy

In addition to turning one of the first special economic zones of China into the largest hub for universities capable of creating competitive advantages for Shenzhen in the global market of higher education and innovative development, the city authorities are developing mechanisms to combine education, science and production into a single complex – a source of constant momentum for economic growth.

In general, the key areas of Shenzhen's talent attraction policy are the following: creating an enabling environment for talented people to live, work, and create, including advanced opportunities for scientific research, innovation, and entrepreneurship development, as well as good laws and efficient government services.

The policy is complex and multi-layered, as it is important not only to attract talented young people and high-level specialists, but, above all, to retain them and maximize their potential. Therefore, constant attention is being paid to creating and developing a comfortable environment for living and working, including special events designed to demonstrate the attention of city authorities to talents.

For example, since 2017, a large festive event has been held in the city on November 1 - the Day of Talents in Shenzhen. China's first talent theme park has been created, the second stage of which was inaugurated in November 2024 as part of the 8th annual Talent Day. The purpose of creating such a theme park is to pay tribute to the people who have made significant contributions to the development of Shenzhen over the past decades, and to demonstrate the city's commitment to nurturing talent.

A special model of postdoctoral career support is an important tool to stimulate the attraction of talents, including international ones, to Shenzhen and use the results of their work to transition the city's economy to an innovative development model.

Since 2005, Shenzhen has been developing a postdoctoral innovation practice base for small and medium-sized technology enterprises. As a result, Shenzhen currently has (in comparison with other cities of the PRC at the national level) the largest number of so-called "postdoctoral stations" (structures designed to implement postdoctoral programs), while 93% of them are located directly in enterprises, which makes it possible to immediately focus scientific research on the needs of the economy and at the same time accelerate the processes of commercialization and implementation of scientific discoveries.

It is characteristic that 62% of postdoctoral research workstations are located in those enterprises in Shenzhen that belong to strategic and rapidly developing industries, among which the following can be mentioned:

31% - digital communications and the Internet

12% - financial securities

14% - new energy and new materials

18% - biotechnologies and medical equipment.

As a result, the large number of patents and intellectual property rights that have arisen as a result of postdoctoral research conducted at Shenzhen enterprises have become one of the important and constant incentives for industrial transformation and innovative development of the city (source: Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Human Resources and Social Security. URL: https://sz.gov.cn ).

One of the key sources of success of the policy of attracting highly qualified specialists is the targeted development of "infrastructure for people": almost 70% of the city's budget is spent on nine key social programs, according to which schools are being built or modernized, jobs are being created, and the healthcare system is being improved ^[2].

With the adoption of the Qiming program in 2023, Shenzhen itself announced the introduction of a more active, open and effective talent policy, which combines both measures of immigration regulation proper and measures of social support for talents and the development of a favorable career environment.

In November 2023, the Talent Management Group of the Shenzhen Municipal Party Committee announced the introduction of a more proactive, open and effective talent policy. – 30 new measures to attract highly qualified talent.

Among the most striking projects is the Talent Exchange, which should help attract talents to areas that are priorities for the development of the city. In particular, we are talking about such areas as integrated circuits, artificial intelligence, biomedicine, new energy vehicles, new energy storage facilities, modern equipment, the ocean, low-altitude economics and new materials.

Support measures – promote career development, research, and convenience in daily life

These measures are comprehensive – they combine measures of immigration regulation proper (special conditions of entry and exit), measures to create a favorable scientific and innovative environment, and measures of social support for talents and their families.

Among them are the following:

- simplification of the entry and exit policy for foreign talents ("talent visa" for high-level foreign talents and scarce talented personnel necessary for the social and economic development of the PRC);

- creation of particularly favorable entry and exit conditions for those working in the Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Scientific and Technical Cooperation Zone. The possibility of simplifying procedures for obtaining work permits and residence permits for foreign talents in certain fields;

- Provision of living allowances for recognized young talents under the age of 35 (including foreigners and youth from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan);

- encouraging promising international innovation organizations to establish headquarters, branches or representative offices in Shenzhen;

- development of world-class scientific journals and organization of high-level international scientific conferences;

- creation of a simplified system for recognizing high-level domestic and international talents in Shenzhen;

- Encouraging national and international cooperation between universities, research institutes and high-tech companies;

- creation of favorable living conditions for talents and support for their families (assistance in family resettlement, care for elderly parents and education of children, medical care).

The National Development and Reform Commission has published a list of new reforms for Shenzhen, which include measures to develop financial markets, protect intellectual property, economic legislation, and attract talent. In particular:

- Restrictions on foreign ownership in telecommunications will be lifted in Shenzhen;

- Shenzhen will simplify visa rules to attract talent;

- the city will be allowed to issue offshore local government bonds denominated in yuan;

- A new intellectual property rights protection system will be established in Shenzhen, which will improve the protection of intellectual property and establish an effective system of penalties for violations.

An important innovation in recent years is the creation of a one–stop shop service where the process of attracting talent and registering a household can be completed online.

As you know, attracting talent from other countries to Shenzhen consists of many stages, including "qualification verification" by the human resources department, "applying for a quota for household registration" to the Department of Development and Reform, and "transferring household registration" to the Department of Public Security. The process was optimized many times, but applicants had to contact different departments and even travel to different cities.

After the introduction of the "universal household registration service in different regions" in 2023, applicants no longer had to return to their previous place of residence to wait for final decisions, but they still had to contact the Department of Public Security separately with the necessary materials, because there was no data exchange between the information systems of various departments..

After the modernization of the talent recruitment and registration system, households can freely exchange data with the national database for managing the number of registered households. As a result, a specialist moving to live and work in Shenzhen can complete all the necessary administrative procedures online.

Talent Policy results

Shenzhen's efforts to improve its talent policy are producing visible results.

If in 1979 there were two specialists in the city, now the total number of talents in Shenzhen has exceeded 6.79 million people. In 2012-2022 alone, the influx of talent to Shenzhen amounted to 1.87 million people. As a result, Shenzhen is making a significant contribution to the growth of the talent influx ratio (the ratio of net talent inflow to the total number of talented people in the entire Pearl River Delta region). If in 2019 this coefficient was 2.8%, then in 2023 it was 4.3% (source: Data from the Seventh National Population Census (2020) // Shenzhen Government Online. URL: https://www.sz.gov.cn/en_szgov/news/latest/content/post_8771774.html).

The continuous improvement of the talent attraction policy has led to the city achieving high scores in various ratings.

Thus, Shenzhen consistently ranks third among Chinese cities in terms of attractiveness for talent (The 2023 Talent Attractiveness Rating in Chinese Cities).

Attracting highly qualified and promising specialists to Shenzhen is not an end in itself, but a tool for developing the economy of the city, the province and the Greater Bay Area as a whole. Therefore, an even more important managerial task is to create conditions for discoveries and new knowledge to be implemented and become innovations.

Shenzhen has also achieved positive results in this regard.

Thus, for three years in a row, Shenzhen ranks third in the country after Beijing and Shanghai in terms of the level of development of innovative talents (The 2023 China Innovative Talents Index). And according to such an indicator as the number of research staff per 10,000 people, Shenzhen has maintained the first place in the country for several years.

It is important that researchers and other highly qualified specialists working in Shenzhen really contribute a lot to the creation of innovations.

For example, in 2023, Shenzhen won the first place in the country in terms of the number of registered patents not related to inventions (234,000 patents) and the second place in terms of the number of patents for inventions per 10,000 people.: This number is 137.9 patents (the average for China in 2021 is 7.5 patents for every 10,000 people (source: Shenzhen Talent Group and Research Center for Technological Innovation, Tsinghua University (2023)).

A good example of the positive multi-level impact of Shenzhen's talent policy on various aspects of socio-economic development is its contribution to accelerating Hong Kong's integration into mainland China.

According to a study conducted by PricewaterhouseCooper, a significant number of high-level professionals from Hong Kong consider Shenzhen as a priority location for their long-term professional careers. And 70% of Hong Kong professionals already working in Shenzhen would like to continue living and working in this city ^[3].

Approaches to assessing the contribution of migration policy to economic growth

Despite the extensive literature devoted to assessing the impact of the mobility of highly qualified personnel on various aspects of social and economic development ^[4-12], there is a lack of work that would allow us to evidence-based causal relationships between the various policies in the field of attracting talent (migration policy) and specific socio-economic effects. The works that note the correlation between various indicators demonstrating the level of well-being, competitiveness, economic development, growth and the volume of influx of highly skilled migrants ^[13-15] do not demonstrate how certain regulatory influences on migration produce specific positive changes in the economies of the studied countries.

Nevertheless, there are more and more publications by economists and mathematicians devoted to attempts to assess the contribution of student mobility and highly qualified professionals to China's economic growth and trade. Thus, complex mathematical calculations based on large amounts of data for the period 1999-2017 proved the presence of the following effects:

- A 1.24% increase in internal student mobility is associated with a 1.0% increase in China's trade exports;

- a 1.18% increase in the influx of students to China is associated with a 1.0% increase in imports to China;

- A 1.13% increase in the influx of international students is associated with a 1.0% increase in China's GDP ^[16].

In the 2022 paper devoted to the empirical analysis of the impact of higher education on economic growth, based on data for the period 1980-2020, it was mathematically proved that an increase in the number of employed university graduates increases industrial success and economic growth. Accordingly, an increase in the number of unemployed graduates worsens economic results. Economic growth is particularly significantly stimulated by such factors as the development of high-tech industries and an increase in government spending on education ^[17]. These conclusions may seem obvious. However, it is not a trivial task to scientifically prove the existence of a link between investments in higher education and economic growth, which requires good statistics and complex economic models for calculations.

Since one of the key objectives of the talent attraction policy is to use highly skilled migrants as a resource to accelerate economic development and innovation, one of the grounds for evaluating the effectiveness of migration policy may be the already mentioned indicator - the number of patents for scientific discoveries and inventions.

According to the World Population Review website (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/patents-by-country ) China leads the world by a wide margin both in the number of patent applications and in the number of international patents received (in 2023, 1,619,268 and 798,347, respectively).

A significant part of the registered Chinese patents originate from Shenzhen.

Data from the Shenzhen Intellectual Property Administration (Shenzhen Intellectual Property Administration) shows that the city firmly holds a leading position in China in the field of intellectual property creation and protection: in 2024, for every 10,000 residents of Shenzhen, there were over 104 patents for high-value inventions, which is more than 8 times higher than the average the indicator for the country ^[18].

However, to date, there are no statistics to assess which of these patents were created in Shenzhen with the participation of foreign scientists and entrepreneurs, as well as information on how many of the registered patents were introduced into production, and how much profit the economy received from their implementation. Thus, the lack of data does not allow us to demonstrate the relationship between the results of talent policy, innovation and economic growth, although, of course, hypothetically this influence is obvious.

The complexity of assessments also lies in the fact that highly qualified external and internal migrants, as well as local graduate students, face the peculiarities of the environment. It is necessary to take into account such factors as the matching of supply and demand in the labor market.

Obviously, if the labor market does not match the innovation model, then academic mobility will not be able to make a proper contribution to innovative development.

Thus, according to the National Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic of China, in April 2023, the unemployment rate among Chinese youth (the proportion of unemployed aged 16 to 24 years) reached a level of 20.4%. At the same time, a third of the employed graduates work in their specialty (the so–called "horizontal discrepancy"), and almost a quarter work in positions that are lower than the existing qualification level of a young specialist (the so-called "vertical discrepancy") ^[19].

In this context, it is useful to pay attention to the experience of MSU-PPI University in Shenzhen, because according to the 2019-2021 graduate employment data, more than 95% of graduates continued their studies or found a job immediately after graduation. At the same time, about 60% of graduates received a contract in government institutions at the central and provincial levels, in state-owned enterprises or Chinese-foreign enterprises, as well as in large private companies (such as Xiaomi, Hikvision, China State Construction Engineering Corporation, as well as in the Bank of China ^[20].

Conclusions

Migration management, including the talent attraction policy, is part of a complex management system for the development of the economy as a whole. Therefore, the effects in various fields depend on the quality of such management and help to solve problems that would seem to be not directly related to academic mobility itself.

Shenzhen's talent recruitment policy is effective. The author's monitoring conducted during 2013-2025 showed that, due to the availability of well-thought-out and interrelated management strategies, a stable system has emerged in the city, the elements of which support each other. On the one hand, the innovative economy, a comfortable environment for science, work and life, as well as opportunities for applying talents and commercializing discoveries attract the best specialists to the city. On the other hand, the influx of talented youth and professionals contributes to the growth of Shenzhen's economy and well-being.

The decisions that are made at different levels of government (from national to municipal) are logically interconnected. When developing them, it is taken into account how steps taken in different areas can affect each other, because when implementing a set of programs, synergetic effects should arise.

Managing the mobility of highly qualified specialists is one of the many tools needed to implement the overall strategic plan to bring the city's economy and social life to a new high–quality state.

The development of the city of Shenzhen is a good example of the rapid construction of a competitive economy of scale (agglomeration economy), which simultaneously takes into account both the effects of combining labor and knowledge markets and the effects of properly developed urbanization. It should be noted that Shenzhen, purposefully implementing a comprehensive policy of attracting talent and developing various urban environments and services, also relies on its environmental advantages. The city, adjacent to the mountains and facing the sea, is famous for its climate, the sandy beaches of Shenzhen Bay, numerous green parks and extensive natural resources, including the waters of the Pearl River.

The model of accelerating technological development by concentrating resources, knowledge, and highly skilled labor in a specific location, where additional favorable conditions are created by developing a high-quality and environmentally sustainable urban environment, is well known. Formally, Shenzhen is implementing the experience of twentieth-century projects in the new conditions, first of all, the creation of Silicon Valley in the USA (a well-known example of an innovation cluster with a high concentration of immigrants), the history of which began before the Second World War.

The US experience confirms the success of China's choice of a specific agglomeration economy model for the development of not only the city of Shenzhen, but also the entire ecosystem of the Great Bay, which, in addition to Shenzhen, includes the entire province of Guangdong (former Canton), Zhuhai District, Macao and Hong Kong Special Administrative Regions. This macroregion of China is not only rapidly becoming a trendsetter of the global innovation system in such sectors as high-tech electronic industry, robotics, space and unmanned systems, chemical engineering, biotechnological startups, but is also a modern example of sustainable environmental development of agglomerations ^[21]. It is characteristic that the well-known American accelerator of high-tech startups HEX began its activity in Shenzhen long before it opened its office in San Francisco (USA).

The HSE Institute for Statistical Research and Knowledge Economics ranked Shenzhen 11th in the latest available Ranking of the innovation Attractiveness of 1127 cities in the HSE Global Cities Innovation Index 2024 (ahead of Hong Kong, but after Seoul). In turn, Beijing took 4th place, and Shanghai – 7th, slightly ahead of Shenzhen in terms of technological development and the state of the creative industries, but losing in terms of the quality of the urban environment ^[22].

It seems that the continuation of research on the experience of China and Shenzhen in the field of student mobility management and highly qualified personnel remains of scientific relevance for solving the tasks of creating reliable systems for assessing the effectiveness of migration policies implemented in order to accelerate socio-economic development.