China encourages overseas students to return

Li Yuanchao, a senior Chinese official, called for more Chinese students studying overseas to come back and set up their own business as a way of reciprocating the country when he attended an overseas student's forum on Aug. 17.

Li's hope echoed with China's nationwide plan called "one-thousand-talents scheme" which promises top salaries and attractive funding to elite researchers who are working overseas and willing to return to the country with the aim of boosting China's innovation capability.

It's not China's first plan that encourages Chinese overseas students to come back.

In the past 15 years, the country has attracted more than 4,000 researchers, mostly at postdoctoral or associate-professor levels, to work in the country through the Chinese Academy of Sciences' 100-Talents Scheme and the Ministry of Education's Yangtze River Scholar Scheme.

During the forum, Li Yuanchao said that China's current modernization drive was thirst for overseas talent. China will fully trust and give free rein to returned talent. Preferential policies will be further modified to help them solve difficulties encountered in life and work.

He suggested that the organizer of the forum, Chinese overseas students association of the western returned students' association, should introduce the scheme to more Chinese overseas students and keep in touch with them so as to better connect the country with overseas talent.

Nearly 100 student representatives said the scheme had excited many overseas Chinese students.

Source: People's Daily Online