http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-04/16/c…
Talent scheme attracts first group of foreigners
By Wang Zhuoqiong (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-16 08:03
The ambitious plan to attract talents from overseas has
attracted the first group of 96 scientists and 26 entrepreneurs to
the Chinese mainland.
Of the group, more than 80 hold foreign passports, and four are
of non-Chinese origin, the Central Organization Department’s bureau
of human resources has told China Daily.
The plan is widely considered one of the key strategic moves to
boost the country’s strength of innovation. Launched in December,
it promises attractive funding and compensation to the elite
personnel who are working overseas and willing to work in
China.
“The number and caliber of applicants are beyond our
expectation,” said a senior official with the bureau. China’s sound
economy and improving science and research environment provide a
broader platform for the talents, said the official, who declined
to be named.
When Ding Hong quit his post as a physics professor at Boston
College to return to China, it shocked his colleagues.
“People thought staying in the US was good for my career. But I
wanted to contribute to the physics research going on in China,” he
told China Daily.
“The projects I am working on will be top quality and are ahead
of the US by at least two years. China can compete for the world’s
top talents – the government has offered tremendous support.”
Li Yuanchao, head of the Central Organization Department, said
earlier the plan aims to help the country achieve its goal of
becoming an innovation-oriented nation. It aims to attract 2,000
talents in 5-10 years.
China reportedly tops the list for the number of researchers,
with 38 million scientific personnel. But only 10,000 are
considered top-level experts.
The plan targets people with full professorships or the
equivalent in developed countries. It offers a State relocation
package of 1 million yuan ($146,000) in addition to salaries and
research funding from the universities and institutes that hire
them.
The entrepreneurs typically bring on board their own technology
and intellectual property rights, and set up enterprises in science
parks.
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.
Once a faculty member at Stanford University in California, Zhou
Xingjiang decided to return to China four years ago.
“Life was fine in the US, but it wasn’t enough,” the 43-year-old
physicist told China Daily.
Driven by the dream of spreading his wings and running his own
laboratory, he returned to China, where he has gone on to invent
the world’s top spectroscopy equipment used to study the energy
level of electrons, something he feels he would have been unable to
accomplish if he had stayed in the US.
Miao Hong, deputy director of the CAS’s
personnel department, said the new scheme shows China is capable of
competing on the world arena for leading talents.
Zhao Qinghua, an official of the Ministry of Science, said “the
government has sufficient investment and resources in science and
industrial development. Now we need the best people to make the
investment pay off”.
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