A growing number of Chinese are returning to work at home after
studying abroad thanks to the country's booming economic
growth.
From 1978 to the end of 2006, roughly 1.1 million Chinese went
abroad for studies, and 275,000 or 26 percent of them returned home
to work, the Ministry of Education figures show.
But the situation is fast changing because "China's domestic
business environment has improved significantly and more students
now like to return home", said Yu Minhong, chairman of Beijing New
Oriental Group, a leading language training organization that has
helped thousands of Chinese students to study abroad.
Only a dozen Chinese students went abroad for studies in 1978.
They were the first batch of Chinese to venture abroad for studies
after the "cultural revolution" (1966-1976).
Studying overseas became a craze after Deng Xiaoping instructed
education departments in June 1978 to expand the scale of people
traveling overseas for studies.
About 3,000 Chinese students, funded by the government, were
sent to about 20 countries in 1978-1979. The number of students
traveling abroad has continued to rise rapidly in the following
years, especially after the launching of a policy in 1985 that
allowed ordinary people to study abroad on their own.
Dean of Peking University's biological sciences institute Rao Yi
was one of the lucky students who benefited from the lenient
policy. A graduate of Shanghai medical university, Rao joined the
University of California in San Francisco in 1985.
Rao, who benefited greatly from studying abroad, decided to
return to the country last year, leaving a professor's post in US
Northwest University.
"I hope that through our efforts the biological sciences
institute of Peking University can become a world class institute,"
he said.
(China Daily January 17, 2008)