Those enrolled would be offered a tax-free signing bonus of 1 million yuan ($158,185) in addition to preferential treatment in public services and social welfare, such as social security, taxation, medical services, academic funding and children's education. For example, scholars of foreign nationality and their family members can apply for permanent residence in China or a two- or five-year multiple-entry visa.

Recruited personnel can work at state-level key innovation projects, laboratories, Central Government-owned enterprises, state-owned commercial financial institutions or hi-tech parks. According to regulations, they should work in China no less than six months per year.

By the end of 2011, more than 2,200 qualified overseas talent had been recruited under the program.

According to a government release in April, Pudong New Area in Shanghai, the city's largest business hub, was home to 60 elite professionals under the Recruitment Program of Global Experts, most of whom are entrepreneurs in hi-tech industries. Enterprises founded by the recruits had attracted an average investment of 240 million yuan ($37.96 million) each.

Easier entry

Wu Wei had worked in the Silicon Valley as a product developer and senior manager for 10 years before setting up his own company in Wuxi, east China's Jiangsu Province, in August 2008. Cynovo, co-founded by Wu and his university classmate Chen Hailei, hires more than 100 people and has developed into an internationally renowned brand in designing customized mobile tablets and handheld devices over the last few years.

Wu, a U.S. national, said that visa application was quite a headache for him before the registration of his company was completed as he could only apply for a three-month visa.

Now enjoying the benefits packages of an expert under local elite professional attraction programs, Wu is on a two-year working visa, but his wife and children who live in China with him are still using three-month visas.

"What bothers me is not the trouble of applying for visas, but the sense of not being welcomed by my homeland," Wu told the People's Daily.

Wu's visa problems could soon be resolved once and for all. On June 30, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, adopted a law on China's exit and entry administration. As the country's latest effort to attract high-caliber individuals from overseas to assist the country's development, the law introduces a sub-category in the "ordinary visa" category called "talent introduction." Ordinary visas will be granted to foreigners who enter the country to work, study, visit relatives, travel or conduct business and to those who qualify for the talent introduction programs, according to the new law.

The new law, which will take effect on July 1, 2013, also allows foreign nationals with outstanding contributions to China's economic and social development to apply for permanent residence status.

By the end of 2011, 4,752 foreigners had received permanent residence cards, the equivalent of a green card, and 1,735 of them are elite professionals recruited by human resources development programs and their family members.

For Yang Guangyun, Vice Dean of the Institute of Education at Xiamen University in southeastern Fujian Province, who spoke to the People's Daily, China must do more than simply offer incentives to returness. "The government should attract elite professionals of Chinese origin living overseas with enormous development opportunities here. But it should also provide a sense of returning home," he said.

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