Better job opportunities here lured more and more overseas Chinese professionals in various fields to go back home, Shanghai Municipal Personnel Bureau officials say, and the bureau is working on details to help such people work and live in the city.

More overseas Chinese are swarming back into Shanghai since the bureau launched the project that hopes to attract more than 10,000 overseas Chinese in the next three years starting from last year.

Mao Dali, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Personnel Bureau, said, "On launching the project, we have been holding various recruiting campaigns both in Shanghai and other parts in the world such as New York, Tokyo and Paris."

He added that a majority of the overseas Chinese really sense Shanghai's sincerity in welcoming them back and the number coming back is rapidly going up.

The latest statistics show more than 2,800 such people have taken jobs since June.

To date, the bureau has issued about 3,300 job vacancies announcement to Chinese who have been educated or worked professionally overseas via a website especially built for the project. Some 72,174 have viewed the website.

Wang Weimao, chief of the bureau's Overseas Recruitment Division, said officials in charge have received some 5,685 inquiries about job vacancies.

"The bureau tries to give as detailed answers as possible to show our enthusiasm to have people work in Shanghai," Huang said.

The personnel bureau has offered people settling down in Shanghai a Licence B permit for working and living in the city, which is used as their identity card when they want to buy house or cars, or apply for a driving licence or bank loan.

At present, more than 1,825 overseas Chinese have obtained the Licence B for themselves or family members.

Some of the overseas professionals encountered difficulties in arranging schooling for their children due to the children's poor Chinese-language skills and officials together with their employers have solved such a problem.

(China Daily July 2, 2004)