How China Is Hoping to Attract Tech Talent

Uncanny Valley | WIRED

WIRED

Technology

4.1 • 571 Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When news broke last month that H1-B visa holders in the U.S would be subjected to a new hefty fee of $100,000, chaos and confusion ensued for a lot of tech workers and their employers. It’s the latest in a string of restrictive visa measures imposed by the Trump administration, which has been making tech talent wonder if they should look elsewhere.

Lauren sits down with WIRED’s Zeyi Yang and Louise Matsakis to discuss the short-term and long-term effects of these measures, and how China is seizing the moment and offering a new visa program to bring tech talent into the country.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey Louise, how are you doing this week? I'm good. I'm excited to be here covering for Mike this week.
0:05.6	Especially considering that it sounds like there's a lot going on outside of your apartment.
0:09.1	Yes, there is a giant sinkhole on my block, so I currently have no running water. Very exciting.
0:15.1	And yet you're podcasting through it? Incredibly grateful. Of course, Lauren. Nothing would get in the way between me and podcasting.
0:22.2	Well, thank you for being our guest co-host two weeks in a row. It's a really busy time for everyone.
0:26.7	And I'm particularly excited to have you on the pod today because of the topic we're going to be
0:31.6	discussing. Before we dive into it, we have another colleague joining us today to Zay Yang.
0:37.4	Hey, Zai, how's it going?
0:39.0	I'm good. I'm enjoying the last warm day of New York. I think the highest is 80 degree today, but it's all down here from now.
0:46.0	So, Zayi, you recently reported on something that went down right after the Trump administration announced last month that H-1B visa holders, which is one of the
0:55.7	most popular work visa programs in the country, would need to pay a hefty new $100,000 fee.
1:05.2	You spoke with a source at the time, who you identify as Cheyenne, about her direct experience. Tell us briefly what happened to her.
1:13.9	Yeah, so Shearing, she works for a semiconductor company in Silicon Valley. And she has just been on a
1:20.3	six-week business trip and ended in Bangkok. So after that, she was planning on, I think, spending
1:25.5	two or three weeks time at home in China.
1:28.0	So she was just on this fly from Bangkok to Hong Kong to his home city in Room Chi.
1:33.4	And then right as the plane was touching down, she connected to the internet and saw that Trump announced this new $100,000 H-1B visa fee that could apply to her.
1:44.0	So within the next three hours, she was panicking, she was talking with her friends about what she
1:48.2	could do, and then she immediately got on the plane back to the United States through Shanghai
1:53.0	and then to Los Angeles.
1:54.0	So it really is one of the examples of a lot of people like her who are on H-1B visas, but
1:59.0	outside of the United States, who was really struggling to figure out whether they would have to pay $100,000 if they just didn't
	...

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