Guangdong province will organize a delegation to the United States in February or March to seek to recruit experts and other high-caliber professionals.

The move targets experts and high-caliber professionals from the fields of finance, logistics, information services, outsourcing services, cultural creativity, equipment manufacturing, automobiles, iron and steel, petrochemical and shipbuilding, which are the pillar industries or those prioritized in the province's economic development strategy, according to a bulletin on the website of the provincial personnel department.

The province welcomes both foreign and Chinese experts schooled overseas, especially those holding master's degrees and above, the bulletin said.

"Recruiting high-caliber experts and professionals is an important human resources strategy of Guangdong province," Lao Zhihong, spokesperson of the provincial personnel department, said.

"The province recently held a meeting on the recruitment plan. Shanghai has taken the lead in the initiative of overseas recruitment in the United States, so Guangdong has to hurry up," he said.

The official said Guangdong has recently taken advantage of the 11th Convention of Overseas Chinese Scholars in Science & Technology (Guangzhou) held late last year.

The province offered over 200 positions, recruiting high-end professionals in finance service, industrial research and development and higher education in Pearl River Delta cities, and some employers offered an annual salary of over 2 million yuan ($290,000).

Over 230 experts and scholars schooled overseas applied for the positions; and the recruitment work is still in progress.

"Many financial institutions and manufacturing enterprises including globally renowned ones have downsized operations due to the global financial crisis and the case is even more serious in the United States. I think it will be easier for the province to recruit experts and high-caliber professionals at present," Lin Shufan, an associate professor of human resources with South China Normal University, said.

"At least the overseas Chinese experts and those from other countries there might be interested."

Wang Dazong, general manager of Beijing Automotive Holdings Ltd, said the US automotive base of Detroit alone has more than 6,500 technicians from China, over 35 percent of whom hold doctor's degree.

"They would certainly boost the innovation of the automobile industry in China if they were back," he said during the 11th Convention of Overseas Chinese Scholars in Science & Technology (Guangzhou).

(China Daily January 13, 2009)