If a country like China, with a population of approximately 1, 3 billion people and the largest number of PhD candidates in the world, still needs to draw in overseas talent, the rest of us must have an even stronger imperative to do so.” 3 The challenge of nationhood and embracing modernity and learning from others is well captured by Thomas Friedman in his famous book “The Lexus and the olive tree” 4 .
In 1992 he was on an assignment as a journalist to Japan and visited the Lexus factory which was the most memorable in his life. At that time, the factory was producing 300 luxurious sedan cars each day, made by 66 human beings and 310 robots. Humans were there mostly for quality control and robots were doing all the work.