Hai Gui

Mandarin term for “sea turtles” – used to describe Chinese expats returning home to weather the world’s financial crisis in a more economically liberal China.

Although the reverse brain-drain of talented Chinese is not new, Reutersreported that the credit crunch has lured more and more Chinese workers back home:

They were the “gold-collar” workers: highly educated Chinese people working on Wall Street. Now, they are known as “sea turtles” as they head home to escape the financial storm. Nearly 1,000 would-be turtles in business suits packed the ballroom of a New York hotel last Saturday, where they pitched themselves at a job fair for opportunities in Shanghai, China’s financial hub.

However, just as in the past, not every “rex-pat” is fortunate:

So many sea turtles … have returned home that the people of Beijing, Shanghai and elsewhere have invented a new name for those returnees who cannot find a job: “seaweed” (hai dai).

The National observed that this acceleration in repatriation was already having political consequences:

Many of those who sought and found better paying jobs abroad are returning, having fled the stagnating economies of the West. While this is a boon for China’s economic growth, these hai gui … bring with them Western modes of thought dangerous to China’s state ideology.

(According to china.org.cn: “Sea turtles pronounced hai gui is a homonym for different characters that mean ‘returnees from overseas.’”)