By Liu Weifeng (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-08-22 07:18

A new plan to make it easier and more appealing for overseas Chinese to return to Beijing was announced yesterday.

Liu Jiangping, deputy director of the Beijing human resources bureau unveiled a slew of preferential policies to facilitate the return of elite Chinese currently living overseas.

"Attracting the elite to come back home is the cornerstone of our 'Overseas Brain Plan'," Liu said.

He was speaking at a conference co-sponsored by the Beijing Association of Science and Technology and the Western Returned Scholars Association to encourage a reversal of the brain drain.

Some 80 Chinese, normally based in the United States, France, Japan, Canada and Australia, attended the function.

Talented people in various academic and business fields are included in the elite category, Liu said.

They are entitled to more flexible exit and entry terms, simplified and supportive household registration procedures and attractive financial support.

Under the new policy, the returning talent will be given multi-entry visas valid for five years.

"Coming back and forth to deal with visa and passports was a real headache for scholars in the past," Zhao Feng, director of the Beijing municipal service center for scholarly exchange, said. The new policy will also apply to spouses and children, he said.

Sean Yang, president of the Chinese Association of Professionals in Science and Technology and an employee of BP in the US State of Texas, said lots of overseas Chinese whose children had grown up and gone to college were happy to return home.

"Kids used to be our major concern when considering whether or not to come back," Yang said.

In the past 10 years, some 60,000 scholars have returned to Beijing and set up businesses in 23 special industrial parks.

(China Daily 08/22/2007 page3)