I don't really think China is luring too many U.S. scientists... Most of the scientists I know pretty much ignore research out of China, because a large portion of it is just not replicable (and / or lies).
A very common path for Chinese scientists is to go to a western university for their doctorate and post-doc, develop a research program, and return to a faculty position in China.
Many Chinese grants include salary for the PI, so an investigator getting multiple grants can earn a lot of money. It's an attractive incentive that appears to be working quite well (from my limited exposure).
As for reliability, there are certainly some issues, but I hesitate to paint with a broad brush. Science is often very discipline-specific in terms of reproducibility, openness of collaboration, funding, etc. etc. There absolutely are fields where the Chinese are quite strong.
The problem with US is for foreign nationals, there is a preset role for us to fit in, while in China, it offers more potentials. I won't say certain it is black and white question at this moment, there is trade-off in between. Living in US is no longer the non-brainer
My sample based on my circle of Chinese PhD students that have graduated in the last 5 years indicates a more willingness to go back and several have.
Ranking by the 1% most highly cited papers in math and computing for those published between 2013-2016:
6 of the top 15 universities are in mainland China,
6 USA,
2 Singapore, and
1 Hong Kong.
Tsinghua is at number 1. Singapore also seems to employ a number of researchers from China.
The article does state that MIT still leads in the broader STEM fields, but Tsinghua may soon take over.
“The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (mit) still leads in the top 1% of stem papers, but Mr Marginson says Tsinghua is on track to be “number one in five years or less”.”
https://www.economist.com/china/2018/11/17/tsinghua-universi...