"We saw very high-profile applicants. Some of them were top finance managers who were unapproachable even a year ago," said An Ping, the human resources director of a fund company that participated in the talent search.

In January, the Beijing Municipal Government held a grand reception in America's Silicon Valley, advertising a detailed blueprint of the city's investment environment and technology development initiative in hopes of encouraging Chinese professionals living on foreign soil to return home and start businesses.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2009 started a professional recruitment project, which aims in the next five years to import 600 top-level talent from abroad. "The project details are still under discussion and expected to come out soon," said the institution's human resources chief Li Hefeng.

Many second-tier Chinese cities are also rushing to find experienced people. Wuxi, in east China's Jiangsu Province, plans to import 30 professionals in the next five years. In 2008, figures from the local government show that the city had fostered 203 projects that were initiated by overseas professionals.

"The majority of returnees see great potential opportunities for development," said Zhou Huaibei, a software engineering professor at Wuhan University in Hubei Province. "In the next 30 years the domestic markets in the relatively underdeveloped central and western regions of China will see great prospects."

Vitality injection

Official statistics show a broad majority of academicians and professionals at China's leading research centers have experience working or studying abroad. At the CAS, 84 percent of academicians have gone overseas. At the Chinese Academy of Engineering, meanwhile, 75 percent have left to gain more experience and come back. And at national-level teaching and research centers across China, 71 percent of leading professionals have overseas experience.

Those Chinese who have left for foreign lands and then came back have started 5,000 enterprises in the country's more than 60 business parks-areas created for returning professionals to incubate their ventures--adding up to a yearly output of 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion).

According to Xinhua reports, there were 20,000 overseas returnees between 1978 and 1989. But by the end of 2007, that number had reached 350,000.

Chinese citizens venturing abroad to study in foreign countries dates back to 1847 when Rong Hong?1828-1912), a man from Guangdong Province, embarked on a trip to the United States. He was eventually accepted into Yale University and in 1854 graduated from there with good grades, becoming the first Chinese to graduate from an American university.

Upon returning to China, Rong spent many years trying to convince Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) officials to send Chinese youth to America. Over a four-year period, beginning in 1872, 120 students went to Connecticut to learn English before being admitted to universities. Many of these students became great Chinese scientists, like Zhan Tianyou, the builder of China's first railway.