Europe likely can’t compete with what the U.S. traditionally spends on science. As a whole, the continent funds about 20% of the world’s research and development, compared with the U.S.’s roughly 29%, according to numbers compiled by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. What’s more, large investments in basic science are usually the purview of a rapidly growing economy, Hallonsten says, which Europe’s is not. “The reason that China has been investing so much in science and technology in the past 20 to 30 years, of course, is that they have the money. They need to invest in something,” he says. “The same thing was true for the United States after World War II.” China now funds around 28% of the world’s R&D, but Hallonsten and other experts aren’t convinced the country will build a similar research environment to that of the U.S. Many researchers moving to China from abroad these days are U.S.-educated Chinese scientists, says Deborah Seligsohn, a professor of political science at Villanova University—people returning home, rather than immigrants.