China’s universities are wooing Western scientists

Dr Charles Lieber had few options. On April 28, the renowned former Harvard chemist took up a new post at Tsinghua University’s Shenzhen campus. Dr Lieber had been looking for a perch after he was convicted in America in 2021

for hiding ties to Chinese research funding

. He is one of a handful of senior Western scholars who have recently taken up posts in China. Others have done so more from a position of choice.

The websites of Peking University and Tsinghua University, respectively, recently confirmed that Dr Gerard Mourou, a French Nobel prize-winning physicist, and Dr Kenji Fukaya, a decorated Japanese mathematician, were joining their faculties.