Nation Seeks Overseas Talents
 

In each of the next five years, China plans to lure 10,000 talents studying abroad back to the motherland, Personnel Minister Song Defu announced.

Preferential policies that would offer higher wages, high-quality housing and job placement for spouses would be incentives, official sources confirmed.

However, details of the preferential policies were not disclosed.

Song said China needs talents to make the nation competitive in advanced high technology and the increasingly globalized economy.

Under the 10th Five-Year Plan (2001-05), world-class scientists, promising professionals and researchers and Chinese students studying abroad will be encouraged to return to the motherland, Song said.

Song urged local personnel authorities to do their best to attract Chinese students studying abroad to return home.

Song said: "China needs a large number of senior or world-class talented people who have mastered the world's advanced technologies and knowledge, who know the rules of international political and economic affairs, as well as the operation of the market economy."

Especially needed are top-flight talents in high technology, financial management and other professions.

Song's call comes when China is on the verge of entering the World Trade Organization. Membership will mean China must be able to compete economically with other nations.

Song said local personnel officials must understand that there is a worldwide competition for talented people.

Beginning in 1978, the start of China's opening up, to 1999, approximately 320,000 Chinese students studied abroad. More than 110,000 have returned.

"They have been the vital new force for pushing forward China's modernization drive," Song said.

He predicted that there will be another wave of Chinese students returning to the motherland because of the government's "policy of supporting studies abroad, encouraging students to return and giving them the freedom of coming back or going outside."

In recent years, the percentage of returned students have increased at an annual rate of more than 13 per cent.

Under the preferential policies, banks, insurance firms and State-owned large enterprises will be able to use their own financial resources to lure talents, sources said.



(China Daily 07/29/2000)

 
   
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