China tops world in losing top-notch personnel

BEIJING - China would head a list of countries whose top-notch talents do not return to their home country after working or living overseas, said a report in Thursday's edition of the People's Daily.

According to the title, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China, most of the cases of lost high-caliber personnel involve people skilled in science and engineering, with an average rate of 87 percent of them choosing not to return.

The People's Republic of China has developed a lot of very talented people since its founding in 1949, and as of 2010, China had 120 million people with outstanding occupational skills, the article said.

With the rapid development of China's higher education, people who have been through university fill 12.5 percent of the country's total major labor force, it added.

The Chinese government has introduced a slew of policies to nurture domestic talents and lure high-caliber workers from overseas, with more than 20,000 high-caliber overseas students having returned to China since the project was launched in 2008, it said.

According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, there are 1,907 people worldwide classified as being in the top echelon of talents in the six fields of biology and biochemistry, computer science, physics, agriculture, mathematics, and chemistry. Of these top talents, China has the greatest representation in physics, mathematics and computer science.

Liu Xutao, a professor with the Chinese Academy of Governance, said many Chinese talents choose to stay overseas for better scientific research conditions.

Liu suggested that domestic departments should create more favorable situations for innovative scientific research when formulating policies to attract both domestic and international personnel.