China aims to draw more overseas talents

BEIJING - China seeks to attract more foreign experts to work in China as part of the country's development drive, an official said in Beijing on Wednesday.

Zhang Jianguo, director of the State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs, said China plans to invite some two million talents from overseas to work on the Chinese mainland in the five-year period from 2011 to 2015.

The country also plans to attract some 500 to 1,000 "top-level" foreign experts in the next five to ten years in a recruitment program dubbed the "1000 plan" targeting overseas talents, Zhang said.

According to Zhang, some 610,000 foreign experts worked on the Chinese mainland in 2013.

He said China will relax its visa policies and will improve protection of foreign experts' legitimate interests in order to attract more overseas talents to work in the country.

China currently has the world's largest labor pool, but the country also suffers from serious "brain drain".

According to figures released by the Central Coordination Group for Talent Work (CCGTW) under the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee last year, a staggering 87 percent of China's scientists and engineers are choosing to stay abroad rather than work in China.