More Talents Return Home From Overseas

Latest data shows that China had seen 320,000 people go abroad for further study from 1978 to 1999, but one third of them have now returned home for career.

Along with the globalization of the economic development, all countries in the world, especially among the developed countries have waged a fierce battle in soliciting for talents. The headhunting companies in American and European countries have taken China, India, Mexico and Brazil and some other developing countries as their main goals. Talents of info-tech and biotech have become the main targets with the main battlefield focused in China and India. It is said that in the Silicon Valley of America, parts of the info-industry have been addressed as Chinese or Indian industry. This year, Japan started to set its foot onto the battlefield too. Japanese Foreign Ministry has worked out a plan as from next year onwards to subsidize one billion yen of scholarship for increasing students from overseas to 10, 000 in five years' time so as to strengthen its influence in Asia. When Japanese Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro visited India last August, his first leg was not first landed on the capital of New Delhi, but instead the famous silicon valley city Bangalore.

In China, a new round fervor of going abroad is welling up. Some elite with high academic degrees would rather give up more secured civil-service posts than venture abroad due to low salary, incomplete labor-employment system and other factors as what they have learned can not be fully applied in their work. This is one thing and the other is the temptation of favorable conditions in foreign countries, plus the limited volume of enrollment in China's institutions of higher learning that make many young and ever-becoming richer parents to seek for better life and study chances for their children. Although China is trying to provide those qualified persons with opportunities for overseas study, Chongqing municipality, for example, offering them 500,000 yuan loans for overseas study, yet the Chinese government would not encourage those young children who are receiving primary and secondary education to go abroad. Some middle school and college students usually go overseas before their graduation. As a result, the Chinese recently going abroad are tending to be younger and younger.

Facing with China's imminent entry into the WTO and the ongoing drive for big development in the west this has provided us with both opportunities and challenges. The international education market is now in a not very flourishing plight, and so educational institutions from overseas have all lowered their threshold in China. In Chongqing, the leading city of the western development, even the students of senior high schools can go abroad. In the western region where talents are badly needed, excellent talented people are yet flowing out to other countries with their ages tending to be younger and younger. What a great pity!

Since last February, more than 160 institutions of higher learning and educational organizations from the US, Britain, Canada and other 15 countries and regions have held education exhibitions in China. These activities have really roused a great hubble-bubble in China. Exhibition for study in Japan also sounded its prelude in Nanjing last August. In the face of those overseas education organizations, that are not begrudging to spend money, and constantly making their requirements lower, what will China do to lure the drained brains to "return home", or even further to attract students from overseas to study in and know about China, and even to tout for those high-tech elite to China?

What China can do now is to implement and carry out preferential policies, improve environment and provide them chances to attract more talents to return home. The latest statistics show that among the Chinese for postgraduate studies in the US, those who are loath to come back are not up to 20 %. But what should merit our attention is that among those who are willing to return home within five to 10 years or even 10 years later come to 60 percent.

For these elite who know the management and technology of the advanced countries by heart to return the only way is that when they have learnt China has really created a sound environment for their careers. Only then can these "phoenixes be willing to alight on their homeland", said Lu Yongxiang, president of Chinese Academy of Sciences. China is going to attract talents from all over the world to China to engage in scientific researches. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and other more open cities have long been locked in a battle for more talents. These cities, eager as they are to quest for the worthier are willing to win over the returned talents by paying them a lot and investing to set up gardens for their careers.

Not long ago, departments concerned formulated more loosening policies for the returned Chinese It regulates that the returned high level personnel can keep their long-term or permanent rights of residence in foreign lands. Those who are willing to give up their rights of residence in foreign countries can be chosen to serve the leading posts in large-sized state-owned enterprises, technical or administrative leading posts in institutes of higher learning or academy of sciences or even directors of governmental offices with proper arrangement for their family members.

Many talents who are studying overseas have so far come to realize the enormous opportunities for careers in China. In 1998, 7, 300 talents returned home, nearly five times that of 1990. Up to now, more than 1,000 returned talents who have mastered the high-tech of the world have settled down in Shanghai Pudong area, and more than 150 companies have been set up by them with a registered capital amounting to 30 million US dollars. The Chinese government is also going in for high-tech elite from foreign lands, and the educational department is out to make China known to more foreign countries about its education and actively lure foreign students to come and study in China.







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