The Chinese government has been actively recruiting foreign-trained Chinese scholars to return to China since the Chinese brain drain began. Japan is among the most popular destinations for Chinese scholars seeking to receive doctoral training. This study explores the factors contributing to the stratification of Japanese-trained Chinese PhDs' academic career attainments using the Mertonian norm of universalism. The results indicate that the norm of universalism can partly explain the stratification of Japanese-trained Chinese PhDs. The reason for this is that their higher pre-graduation productivity enhances the chance that Japanese-trained Chinese PhDs have of obtaining an academic position at a top university in China. In addition to pre-graduation academic productivity, other factors, including the prestige of the university attended, the duration of the academic sojourn in Japan, and the ethnicity of the supervisor influence employment outcomes.