Multinationals in China have helped hold back outgoing local talents, although they posed great challenges to local companies and research institutes, said a Chinese expert Friday.

At the ongoing International Forum on Globalization of R&D, Wu Yikang, senior advisor of the Chinese Association for International Science and Technology Cooperation, said more and more local talents in China flowed to multinationals since multinationals are mostly engaged in cutting-edge hi-tech researches and offer high salaries.

"It is a fact that multinationals in China have created large amount of job opportunities for Chinese graduates, and also attracted many Chinese students studying abroad to return home," he said.

Early reports said almost 40 percent of China's elite group worked in foreign-invested enterprises. A survey in Shanghai also indicated that the proportion of Chinese researchers to expatriate R&D staff reached nearly 40 to 1 in foreign-invested research agencies based in China.

However, Wu pointed out, Chinese R&D talents usually have very good academic background but very little market experiences.

According to a survey by Mckinsey Consulting Company, only 10 to 25 percent of 350,000 college graduates majoring in engineering can really fits work in multinationals.

"The training provided by multinationals can help improve Chinese researchers," Wu said.

"The well-trained talents in multinationals are actually potential human resources for the Chinese local companies, when the companies grow stronger," he stressed.

According to a survey by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, China has become one of the major R&D bases in the world, as 61.8 percent of the world's multinationals considered China the first choice to set up overseas R&D institutes.

(Xinhua News Agency December 18, 2006)