Overseas experience constitutes an important feature for Chinese elite scientists, the returnees not only enhance the reputation of China's higher education system, but also profoundly change China's academic ecology. In this paper, we analyze whether and how overseas experience affects elite scientists’-career mobility in China. The research concludes that, compared with the local, those with overseas experience are more likely to choose job hopping. Moreover, elite scientists with overseas experience tend to move to provinces with better academic support conditions, and the research suggests that overseas experience is important for career mobility owing to the fact that it promotes scholars’-willingness to move by loosening the connection between scholars and local academic networks and by reducing flow costs.
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