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Zhou Ran, who received a doctor’s degree in microelectronics from the University of Texas at Dallas, the United States, is an analog integrated circuit design engineer at Shenzhen State Microelectronics Co. Ltd. in south China’s Guangdong Province. He decided to come back to China earlier this year to change the stereotype that China can only make cheap and shoddy products. He also found it difficult for Chinese people to establish a sense of belonging or be accepted by mainstream society in the United States.
Like Zhou, more and more Chinese students are coming back to their home country after studying abroad to advance their careers, with most of them faring well.
Between 1978 and 2012, more than 2.6 million Chinese citizens studied outside the country, making China the biggest source of international students, according to the Ministry of Education. During the same period, around 1.09 million Chinese overseas students chose to return to China after finishing their studies.
Despite the deficit, an unprecedented number of Chinese students are returning home in search of job opportunities. In 2012 alone, 272,900 Chinese returned, up 46.57 percent compared to 2011. The year-onyear growth in returning students has been above 20 percent since 2008.
Coming home
According to a recent report on the career development of overseas returnees, most have no difficulty finding jobs in an increasingly competitive job market. The report, issued together by the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization and China Social Sciences Academic Press, said that 86.3 percent of those returning to China were employed within six months of their return while only 5.5 percent spent more than a year searching for a job.
Wang Huiyao, Director of the Center for China and Globalization and chief author of the report, explained that returning students have a diploma from a foreign institution and an excellent command of a foreign language, which makes them the perfect employees for companies keen to expand their overseas operations and contacts.
The report said that most returnees studied finance, economics, management and engineering, which are all in demand across China’s labor market.
According to Wang, today’s overseas students have different factors to consider when deciding when to launch their career compared with older generations.
Wang’s report revealed the results of a survey among recent overseas returnees. It found that 90.9 percent of respondents regarded being closer to their parents a factor that brought them back home, while 78.4 percent were confident of their career prospects in China. Joining multinational companies’ Chinese branches is the number one choice for returning students as more than a quarter of them landed their first job at one after returning. The report explained that overseas returnees’ experience with another culture made them ideal workers in companies aiming for a higher degree of globalization. “Many Chinese overseas students stayed abroad after graduating in the 1980s and 1990s due to the considerable gap between China and where they studied in terms of standards of living, which is understandable,” Wang said. He added that the new generation of returnees who were born in the 1980s and 1990s are mostly the only children of middle-class parents. They went abroad to obtain a degree from a foreign institution, but with no intention to emigrate.
Wang said that while China’s fast economic growth attracts many returnees, fewer job opportunities in recession-bound Europe or the United States and harsher policies on immigrants by foreign governments also contribute to the surge of returnees in recent years.
Incentives
While the number of students flowing both in and out of China has been peaking in the past five years, China is still hungry for more brilliant scientists and engineers as well as people with solid management expertise to fuel its modernization.
According to statistics from a panel under the central authorities that formulates China’s talent attraction programs, among all countries, China suffers from the worst deficit in terms of high-caliber professionals, with 87 percent of its top-level scientists and engineers working abroad rather than at home.
With a doctor’s degree in public policy and management from Carnegie Mellon University, Xue Lan, Dean of the School of Public Policy and Management of Tsinghua University, worked at George Washington University as an assistant professor before returning to China in 1996.
Xue, who was lured back to China by the opportunity to observe, study and influence China’s grand social transition, admitted that compared with his generation of returning teaching staff in Tsinghua, younger returnees, who account for half of his school’s fulltime lecturers, face much more pressure.
Xue said that when he started to teach at Tsinghua in 1996, the university provided him with free accommodation in a studio of less than 50 square meters. He was given a newer and larger apartment soon after while his old studio was given to new returnees.
“Teaching staff at institutions of higher learning are underpaid in China compared with their foreign counterparts. Housing prices in Beijing have skyrocketed in the last few years, which means that these young lecturers cannot afford an apartment in Beijing, reducing well-qualified professionals’enthusiasm for coming back,” Xue told China Youth Daily. Xue said that many overseas students want to join China’s civil service after obtaining a master’s or doctor’s degree in public policy and management abroad. However, their lack of knowledge about national conditions put them in a disadvantageous position during civil service exams, which reduces their chance of making full use of their knowledge.
Zhou, the integrated circuit designer in Shenzhen, also complained that the relatively low income in China scare many qualified engineers away. Zhou commented that fresh graduates from his major can earn three to five times more in the United States than in the largest cities in China. Moreover, staying abroad means more opportunities to keep their knowledge and skills up to date, as China still lags behind in the technology sector in general, he said.
In September, China Youth Daily published results of a survey among 1,223 professionals with overseas studying experience. While answering what holds Chinese students from coming back, 71.4 percent cited “relatively low income” as a major career development disadvantage, 60.3 percent cited “unfavorable career development prospects,” and 49.7 percent cited “lack of opportunities to use their knowledge.”
Fully aware of the situation, governments at central and local levels have both initiated programs geared at bringing talented people back from outside.
Recruiting exceptional scientists and engineers from abroad is listed as one of the 12 programs that comprise China’s National Medium- and Long-term Talent Development Plan (2010-20). Released in June 2010, the plan is a blueprint for creating a highly skilled workforce within the next 10 years.
![](https://www.soolun.com/img/pic.php?url=http://img.resource.qikan.cn/qkimages/bzbe/bzbe201349/bzbe20134912-1-l.jpg)
China has launched more than a dozen national programs aimed at attracting top scientists and engineers from around the world to conduct innovative research or start up businesses in China.
The 1,000 Talents Program, officially known as the Recruitment Program of Global Experts, was launched in 2008 and is aimed at enticing around 2,000 accomplished scientists to work in China within the next five to 10 years.
The Central Government provides each person in the program with a lump-sum award of 1 million yuan ($164,000) as well as research grants or incentives to start up their own companies. On top of this, these talented professionals are given preferential treatment in medical care, housing, and for foreign nationals, permanent residency and multi-entry visas. As of the beginning of this year, the program has enrolled 3,319 people across nine intakes.
Similar initiatives have been launched at a local level by provincial and city governments as well as science parks around the country, which have lured back more than 20,000 highly trained scientists and engineers from abroad.
Kong Jingjing, chief of the Overseas Business Division of Zhaopin.com, one of China’s leading job websites, said that many government-sponsored programs aimed at attracting top-notch professionals from abroad fail to target the correct age group.
Many governments only seek people with senior titles, which often limit their headhunting to those aged above 45, Kong said, adding that these senior managers or engineers usually have children who are about to start higher education abroad and are reluctant to separate from their families.
“Capable young people yearning for opportunities to kick-start their career are more likely to come back and it is they that need a platform,” Kong said.
Like Zhou, more and more Chinese students are coming back to their home country after studying abroad to advance their careers, with most of them faring well.
Between 1978 and 2012, more than 2.6 million Chinese citizens studied outside the country, making China the biggest source of international students, according to the Ministry of Education. During the same period, around 1.09 million Chinese overseas students chose to return to China after finishing their studies.
Despite the deficit, an unprecedented number of Chinese students are returning home in search of job opportunities. In 2012 alone, 272,900 Chinese returned, up 46.57 percent compared to 2011. The year-onyear growth in returning students has been above 20 percent since 2008.
Coming home
According to a recent report on the career development of overseas returnees, most have no difficulty finding jobs in an increasingly competitive job market. The report, issued together by the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization and China Social Sciences Academic Press, said that 86.3 percent of those returning to China were employed within six months of their return while only 5.5 percent spent more than a year searching for a job.
Wang Huiyao, Director of the Center for China and Globalization and chief author of the report, explained that returning students have a diploma from a foreign institution and an excellent command of a foreign language, which makes them the perfect employees for companies keen to expand their overseas operations and contacts.
The report said that most returnees studied finance, economics, management and engineering, which are all in demand across China’s labor market.
According to Wang, today’s overseas students have different factors to consider when deciding when to launch their career compared with older generations.
Wang’s report revealed the results of a survey among recent overseas returnees. It found that 90.9 percent of respondents regarded being closer to their parents a factor that brought them back home, while 78.4 percent were confident of their career prospects in China. Joining multinational companies’ Chinese branches is the number one choice for returning students as more than a quarter of them landed their first job at one after returning. The report explained that overseas returnees’ experience with another culture made them ideal workers in companies aiming for a higher degree of globalization. “Many Chinese overseas students stayed abroad after graduating in the 1980s and 1990s due to the considerable gap between China and where they studied in terms of standards of living, which is understandable,” Wang said. He added that the new generation of returnees who were born in the 1980s and 1990s are mostly the only children of middle-class parents. They went abroad to obtain a degree from a foreign institution, but with no intention to emigrate.
Wang said that while China’s fast economic growth attracts many returnees, fewer job opportunities in recession-bound Europe or the United States and harsher policies on immigrants by foreign governments also contribute to the surge of returnees in recent years.
Incentives
While the number of students flowing both in and out of China has been peaking in the past five years, China is still hungry for more brilliant scientists and engineers as well as people with solid management expertise to fuel its modernization.
According to statistics from a panel under the central authorities that formulates China’s talent attraction programs, among all countries, China suffers from the worst deficit in terms of high-caliber professionals, with 87 percent of its top-level scientists and engineers working abroad rather than at home.
With a doctor’s degree in public policy and management from Carnegie Mellon University, Xue Lan, Dean of the School of Public Policy and Management of Tsinghua University, worked at George Washington University as an assistant professor before returning to China in 1996.
Xue, who was lured back to China by the opportunity to observe, study and influence China’s grand social transition, admitted that compared with his generation of returning teaching staff in Tsinghua, younger returnees, who account for half of his school’s fulltime lecturers, face much more pressure.
Xue said that when he started to teach at Tsinghua in 1996, the university provided him with free accommodation in a studio of less than 50 square meters. He was given a newer and larger apartment soon after while his old studio was given to new returnees.
“Teaching staff at institutions of higher learning are underpaid in China compared with their foreign counterparts. Housing prices in Beijing have skyrocketed in the last few years, which means that these young lecturers cannot afford an apartment in Beijing, reducing well-qualified professionals’enthusiasm for coming back,” Xue told China Youth Daily. Xue said that many overseas students want to join China’s civil service after obtaining a master’s or doctor’s degree in public policy and management abroad. However, their lack of knowledge about national conditions put them in a disadvantageous position during civil service exams, which reduces their chance of making full use of their knowledge.
Zhou, the integrated circuit designer in Shenzhen, also complained that the relatively low income in China scare many qualified engineers away. Zhou commented that fresh graduates from his major can earn three to five times more in the United States than in the largest cities in China. Moreover, staying abroad means more opportunities to keep their knowledge and skills up to date, as China still lags behind in the technology sector in general, he said.
In September, China Youth Daily published results of a survey among 1,223 professionals with overseas studying experience. While answering what holds Chinese students from coming back, 71.4 percent cited “relatively low income” as a major career development disadvantage, 60.3 percent cited “unfavorable career development prospects,” and 49.7 percent cited “lack of opportunities to use their knowledge.”
Fully aware of the situation, governments at central and local levels have both initiated programs geared at bringing talented people back from outside.
Recruiting exceptional scientists and engineers from abroad is listed as one of the 12 programs that comprise China’s National Medium- and Long-term Talent Development Plan (2010-20). Released in June 2010, the plan is a blueprint for creating a highly skilled workforce within the next 10 years.
![](https://www.soolun.com/img/pic.php?url=http://img.resource.qikan.cn/qkimages/bzbe/bzbe201349/bzbe20134912-1-l.jpg)
China has launched more than a dozen national programs aimed at attracting top scientists and engineers from around the world to conduct innovative research or start up businesses in China.
The 1,000 Talents Program, officially known as the Recruitment Program of Global Experts, was launched in 2008 and is aimed at enticing around 2,000 accomplished scientists to work in China within the next five to 10 years.
The Central Government provides each person in the program with a lump-sum award of 1 million yuan ($164,000) as well as research grants or incentives to start up their own companies. On top of this, these talented professionals are given preferential treatment in medical care, housing, and for foreign nationals, permanent residency and multi-entry visas. As of the beginning of this year, the program has enrolled 3,319 people across nine intakes.
Similar initiatives have been launched at a local level by provincial and city governments as well as science parks around the country, which have lured back more than 20,000 highly trained scientists and engineers from abroad.
Kong Jingjing, chief of the Overseas Business Division of Zhaopin.com, one of China’s leading job websites, said that many government-sponsored programs aimed at attracting top-notch professionals from abroad fail to target the correct age group.
Many governments only seek people with senior titles, which often limit their headhunting to those aged above 45, Kong said, adding that these senior managers or engineers usually have children who are about to start higher education abroad and are reluctant to separate from their families.
“Capable young people yearning for opportunities to kick-start their career are more likely to come back and it is they that need a platform,” Kong said.