TY - JOUR AB - Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Chinese Central Government’s plan to alleviate brain drain, called the Thousand Talents Plan, has been glocalized by three major local governments: Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangdong.Design/methodology/approach The lens of glocalization pays special attention to the impact of local reactions to global forces. Materials from the Recruitment Program of Global Experts for three major cases were examined for glocal characteristics. An analysis of each case was carried out to compare the strategies and implementations to explore the individual glocalizations and larger national similarities.Findings The findings show that each of the localities has distinct regional variations in their strategies: Shanghai utilized its economic prowess, Tianjin focused on clustering experts, and Guangdong maximized its geographic proximity to Hong Kong. At the same time, all three policies were still rooted in human capital development theory, with a keen emphasis to attracting migrants with greater propensity for staying long term in China.Originality/value The study of brain drain is important because it is a problem that plagues communities around the world, especially non-western societies. While China’s tactics to combat brain drain have been examined, the consideration of glocalization in the cases of Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangdong have not been carried out. VL - 20 IS - 1 SN - 2396-7404 DO - 10.1108/IJCED-10-2017-0028 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCED-10-2017-0028 AU - Kim Hanna AU - Allen Ryan Michael PY - 2018 Y1 - 2018/01/01 TI - Glocalizing cures for China’s brain drain ills: The Thousand Talents Plan in Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangdong T2 - International Journal of Comparative Education and Development PB - Emerald Publishing Limited SP - 16 EP - 32 Y2 - 2024/05/10 ER -