One of the essential ingredients for developing and sustaining a high-performance innovation culture is the deployment and effective utilization of scientific and engineering talent. The next five chapters provide a comprehensive and detailed examination of China's scientific and technical talent pool, including a stocktaking of the current science and technology (S&T) workforce, a thorough analysis of higher education in S&T, a discussion about how S&T talent in China is being utilized, an examination of the “brain drain” phenomenon, and a forecast of the demand and supply for scientists and engineers over the next five years. Taken together, these five chapters present a broad, integrated picture of China's S&T talent situation and its international connections. The analysis is built on field interviews as well as in-depth inspection, scrutiny, and analysis as well as the interpretation of a large volume of primary talent-related data from Chinese sources. It is this overall set of data and the accompanying analysis that forms the core of this book.

This chapter starts with a discussion of terminology and focuses on the application of the internationally used definition – human resources in science and technology (HRST) – and its variations in the Chinese context. Particular attention is paid to the latter – the terminological variations that occur in the Chinese situation – to lay a clear foundation for the subsequent discussion about and analysis of the case of the People's Republic of China.