More than 9,400 foreign professionals and returned overseas Chinese holding foreign expert certificates moved to Shanghai to work last year, almost fulfilling the city's two-year goal in just 12 months, personnel officials announced yesterday.

That number doesn't include foreigners, and overseas Chinese working in the city without a foreign expert's certificate, a number estimated at more than 60,000.

More than 4,000 foreign professionals - which doesn't include people from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau - moved to Shanghai last year, an increase of about 20 percent from 2005.

Last year also saw more than 4,000 overseas Chinese -- Chinese born abroad or those who went overseas to study - return to the Chinese mainland to take jobs in Shanghai. The city is currently home to 67,000 returned overseas Chinese, about one-third of all returnees on the mainland.

"We are excited that Shanghai has become so attractive to foreigners and overseas Chinese," said Huang Weimao, director of the Shanghai Personnel Bureau's international exchange division.

The bureau didn't say how many expats and returned Chinese moved back overseas last year, or provide the net increase.

The city launched a project to bring overseas Chinese to the city at the start of 2003. During the first phase of that project, which ran until the end of 2005, 10,203 returnees moved to Shanghai.

The second-round of the project, which kicked off at the end of last year, aims to bring another 10,000 returnees, foreign experts and professionals from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan to the city by the end of this year.

"We are convinced that we can achieve that goal far quicker than we did in the first round," Huang said.

(Shanghai Daily January 11, 2007)