Overseas talent eying the booming Chinese market can also see new opportunities arising, as Zhejiang is keen to attract them to boost its development.

The provincial government plans to introduce and support 1,000 high-end overseas talents in the next decade. In 2011, they plan to introduce more than 160 high-caliber talents from abroad.

In recent years, the provincial government has implemented several favorable policies to attract more high-end overseas talent and a special body has been established to oversee the whole procedure and provide related services and support.

Officials attach great importance to the work. In the first week after China's most important vacation - the Spring Festival - Secretary of the provincial Party committee, Zhao Hongzhu, and Governor Lu Zushan paid a visit to the Qingshanhu Science and Technology Center in Lin'an city. They also visited an innovation industrial park and had talks with people from overseas who work in the province.

On May 7, 2010, Zhejiang organized a 150-member delegation including the CEOs of private companies and representatives of the province's universities, scientific research institutions and high-tech development parks to Silicon Valley and New York in the United States, and held two conferences introducing high-level talent to privately owned companies in Zhejiang.

In the international intellectual exchange exhibition in 2010, 441 returned overseas students participated, and 800 enterprises took part, covering fields including electronic information, biological medicine, energy saving and environmental protection, new energy materials, and modern services. More than 337 cooperation agreements were achieved at the conference.

The Zhejiang-Ningbo Intellectual Scientific Week last September had 1,800 booths, attracting 2,000 public service units and over 40,000 people including 500 high level experts from both home and abroad.

Yang Liyou, a returned overseas expert on thin film battery technology who received his physics doctoral degree in the United States, founded a pioneering solar energy firm with a private Chinese company.

Another overseas returnee, Hua Guichao, founder of an electronics company named Inventronics, now owns 16 patents and was honored as one of China's top 10 economic figures in 2010 - an annual award given by China's Central Television for prominent business people.

Zhejiang also has 24 high-tech business incubators, including four state-level ones, for returning overseas students.

Returned students have founded 860 enterprises, which in 2008, generated total revenue of 11.96 billion yuan ($1.84 billion). Some 26 of these companies each earned over 100 billion yuan, and 51 surpassed 10 million yuan.

(China Daily 06/01/2011 page24)