I don’t know about USA, but many many Germans went there to work in rising automotive sector. The growth opportunities are insane while building future without internal combustion engines.
"many many"... I doubt that, but if so, that would be interesting reading. Do you have any numbers and examples? I know some of BMW's early electric car team went to China, after BMW stopped the development. But anyone else?
Dictatorship aside, the problem with Chinese companies is the glass ceiling. It is pretty much impossible to make a career there as foreigner. Very much unlike the US and EU.
No press source. Students from the same study year gladly stayed on China after some graduate programs. They weren’t Chinese. I don’t think they were the single ones. Who wants to sit in dying Europe? No innovation, no money for innovation. No will for it either.
I am pretty sure, you have zero chance as foreigner to make great career in EU. Though EU is big and diverse. About USA I don’t know. First thing I see is a big problem with visa.
China does not need random US engineers. It needs a comparatively small pool of people who have the specific know how that China currently lacks and it can probably afford to pay them some large multiple over the US market rate. Why would a massive career and financial boost not be enough to sway a significant fraction of people driven enough to become A-players in their field in the first place, especially if China is clever about how it rolls out the red carpet for them and their families?
The article mentions "China based employees [of existing EDA companies]", so by the sounds of it they found the limited set of people who've already relocated and made them a better (or non-refusable?) offer.
Expatriates represent less than 1% of people, and market analysts categorize movement between countries into “inbound countries” and “outbound countries”.