Some Chinese who were educated abroad are coming home to try to better the country's villages and cities.

Liu Jie.

Liu Jie, who holds a master's degree in environmental protection from a Canadian university, is one of the first three overseas Chinese returnees to sign up for the latest recruitment exam of village officials in Zhongshan city, Guangdong province.

Only those who have a residency permit in the city can take the exam.

"Though at the grassroots, village officials are an indispensable part of the society. I can realize my value as long as I work hard," said Liu, who has worked with the city's civil affairs bureau since his return early this year.

Liu and others like him are signs that a few overseas Chinese returnees are starting to jump aboard the bandwagon of the country's "university graduate village officials" program started in 2005.

In the Guangdong city of Dongguan, two United Kingdom-educated returnees have sat with 23 applicants to take a recent village official exam. Nine returnees have made it to the interview stage.

Officials in the Guangzhou town of Zengcheng are searching for 200 village officials with postgraduate education background or higher. Zengcheng is a town in Guangzhou, capital city of Guangdong.

Since 2005, the government has encouraged university graduates to work in villages in a bid to improve rural administration and create more employment. By the end of 2008, some 130,000 Chinese graduates were working as village officials across the country.

Yet until now, Chinese who have received overseas education seemed invisible in the legion of graduates in their application for grassroots jobs.

Hong Yan, vice-director of the city of Zhongshan organization department, said he is not surprised by the students coming back home to work.

Overseas returnees favor villages in relatively developed Pearl River and Yangtze River deltas where earnings are often similar to those in cities.

Liu was interviewed yesterday after he passed the written exam, with the chances for being selected at 46 to 1.

"I hope I'm lucky enough to pass the interview and have a chance to practice here what I learned abroad," Liu said. "As a new graduate, I want to start with the basics."

But his fellow competitor, Liang Weimin, was not fortunate enough to pass the written exam.

Liang, who has a master's degree from a Swedish university, said that overseas returnees have no advantages in the exam, which tests applicants in politics, public administration, law and document writing.

One factor that makes the exam tougher for returnees is that the exam tests applicants' knowledge about local situations, which overseas returnees may lack after living abroad for a long while, Hong said.

Overseas returnees who pass selection procedures must be familiar with local conditions, Hong said.

(China Daily August 4, 2009)