China is in the middle of the third major influx of overseas Chinese students, media reported recently. Some experts predicted there will be a historical shift that China sees more inflow than outflow of talented people over the next 5 years.

Returning students looking for jobs at a recruitment fair this past spring. Photo: Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchange under the Ministry of Education website

In making the transformation into a big talent attracter, China will slowly emerge as an important part of the global competition for human resources, the experts added.

China had a total of 545,000 students overseas in 2016, and 433,000 returning after graduating, with an increase of 36.2% and 58.6% respectively compared with 2012, according to an Education Ministry blue paper, issued in Jan. 2017.As China grows into the world’s largest source of overseas students, the gap between the two directions narrows, with data showing more than 80% of overseas Chinese students return to the motherland to pursue a career.

Many of these overseas-educated young people, in various areas such as science, technology, economics, education, culture and so on, have contributed to build China’s innovative economy.

Analysts attribute the country’s attraction for these returnees to the economic progress and greater competitiveness of China, which jumped seven places on the 2017 World Competitiveness Yearbook from Lausanne’s International Institute for Management Development. The country also showed the best performance in employment among the 63 economies surveyed.

Some ambitious support policies from the Chinese government in recent years have helped lure foreign-educated, talented people back. For example, the National Special Support Program for High-level Talent, dubbed the “10,000 Talents Program,” was announced in 2012 with the goal of getting 10,000 brainy people specialized in the natural sciences, engineering, philosophy, social sciences and higher education to come to China.

At the same time, more than 300 business incubators were set up to encourage entrepreneurs among the returnees and a large number of attractive jobs were provided.

Another policy, China’s “1,000 Talents Program”, got the thumbs up from the Spanish newspaper, El Pais, in an article. The program opened in 2008 with the goal of luring top overseas scientists and professionals to key innovation projects, laboratories, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), state-owned commercial and financial institutions, and high-tech industrial parks.

Data shows that the program has managed to haul in more than 7,000 high-level talents, grouped in 13 batches, creating the largest ever influx of returnees since 1949, and becomes China’s most influential talent-attraction brand.

Companies submitted design proposals for a new generation of bullet train to China Railway Corp at a meeting in Shanghai on Wednesday.

Classed in the existing “Fuxing” family of trains, the new model will be developed to stringent Chinese railway standards and technologies. It will travel 250 kilometers per hour. Fuxing translates as “rejuvenation”.

CRC, the State-owned rail operator, said the new models will be developed for various environments and will feature lower manufacturing and operating costs and improved energy efficiency. Trains in the Fuxing family use less energy, produce less noise and have a longer service life than those in the “Harmony” family currently in service, it said.

Companies including CSR Qingdao Sifang and CRRC Changchun Railway Vehicles have submitted designs for the new model.

The domestically designed Fuxing family of bullet trains entered service in September. A Fuxing model runs between Beijing and Shanghai at 350 km/h, making it the world’s fastest train service.

According to CRC, the Fuxing train carried 592,000 passengers－averaging 95 percent of capacity－on the Beijing-Shanghai line in its first full month of operation, and more than 99 percent of the trains ran on time, the company said.

The Beijing Railway Bureau said Fuxing trains are also being used on the Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed line and on the Beijing-Tianjin intercity rail, but they are allowed to run at only 300 km/h for the time being.

Fuxing trains on the Beijing-Guangzhou line reached 100 percent capacity, with 420,000 passengers carried, it said.

The Beijing-Tianjin intercity bullet train opened in 2008－the first high-speed rail line in the country. Nationally, since then, 7 billion trips have been made on China’s expanding high-speed rail network.

China has the world’s most extensive high-speed rail network, with 22,000 km of track currently in use.

A series of pictures of cell structures painted by middle school students in east China’s Hangzhou are said to be so realistic that many have mistaken them for photographs from a book, Qianjiang Evening News reported.

A competition for painting plant and animal cell structures was held at a middle school in Hangzhou, to encourage students’ curiosity in biology.

In addition to elaborate paintings, the students also made a detailed annotation for each cell body.

Gao Yong, a biology teacher who posted these drawings online, said it is a tradition in the school for students to complete cell structure paintings before starting high school biology studies. Despite some mistakes, the pictures show students’ understanding of cell structures, said Gao.

Some students admitted that although they have not observed real cells through a microscope, making the paintings does help them remember cell structures.

In a response to a speech by Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen on Thursday, Beijing reiterated that recognition of the one-China principle is essential to good cross-Straits relations.

“The one-China principle is the political foundation of cross-Straits relations. The 1992 Consensus embodies the one-China principle and defines the fundamental nature of cross-Straits relations. It thus holds the key to the peaceful development of relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits,” Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said on Thursday.

“We are open to communicate, with the same criteria, with any political party on the island.”

Ma added: “Recognize the historical fact of the 1992 Consensus and that the two sides both belong to one China, and then our two sides can conduct dialogue to address the concerns of the people of both sides, and no political party or group in Taiwan will have any difficulty conducting exchanges with the mainland.”

“Only returning to recognition of the common political foundation－the 1992 Consensus－can dispel the clouds and offer new prospects for the development of cross-Straits relations,” he said.

Tsai delivered a speech on Thursday morning at a forum to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the resumption of exchanges between the mainland and Taiwan.

In the speech, Tsai reiterated the stance she took when she assumed office in May 2016. She was then accused by Beijing of being ambiguous about the one-China principle.

Tsai’s failure to explicitly recognize the 1992 Consensus has led to the suspension of official communication channels between the parties since June 2016.

Tsai said on Thursday that with the completion of the 19th CPC National Congress on Tuesday, the Communist Party of China had entered a new era and is at a turning point for change.

In the report he delivered at the opening session of the congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed that the one-China principle is the political foundation of cross-Straits relations.

“We stand firm in safeguarding China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.… We will never allow anyone, any organization, or any political party, at any time or in any form, to separate any part of Chinese territory from China,” he said.

The establishment of supervisory commissions at various levels and their working together with the disciplinary authorities of the Communist Party of China are not to enlarge the power of discipline inspectors but to make anti-graft efforts more concentrated and standardized, a senior discipline official said on Thursday.

Xiao Pei, deputy secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China, answers questions from journalists at the news conference, on Oct 26, 2017. [Photo by Feng Yongbin/China Daily]

“The establishment of supervisory commissions is to integrate anti-corruption resources and power separated in different departments, such as in corruption prevention and prosecuting authorities, to form a joint force,” said Xiao Pei, deputy head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Party’s top discipline watchdog.

He made the remark at a news conference while explaining the report made at the beginning of the 19th CPC National Congress, which ended on Tuesday.

General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Xi Jinping said while making a report to the congress on Oct 18 that the Party must strengthen checks on and oversight over the exercise of power and that supervisory commissions at the national, provincial, city and county levels will be set up.

“A national supervision law will be formulated. Supervisory commissions will be given responsibilities, powers and means of investigation in accordance with law,” Xi said. “The practice of shuanggui will be replaced by detention.”

Shuanggui is a form of intraparty disciplinary action that requires a Party member under investigation to cooperate with questioning at a designated place and time.

Xiao said many investigatory measures employed by disciplinary inspectors are expected to be written into the law and better regulated.

“The national supervisory commission is not a judicial body. Its duty is to supervise, investigate and handle major duty-related crimes such as corruption,” Xiao said.

Xiao said the law will include strict regulations on approval procedures, conditions for use and time limits for detention. Rules on how to ensure the security and medical care of those questioned will also be written into the law, he said.

“That will make our anti-corruption drive more codified,” he said.

At the end of last year, a supervisory commission pilot program started in three provincial-level regions－Beijing, Shanxi and Zhejiang. In June, the first draft of the national supervision law was submitted to the top legislature for first review.

Zhang Shuofu, head of Beijing’s Discipline Inspection Commission, said that the capital has completed the trial period and all public servants in the capital have been brought under oversight.

“We’ve put 997,000 civil servants on the supervision list, 787,000 more than before,” he said.

Supervisory commissions at the city level and at district levels have been set up in Beijing, he said.

“We’ve issued 36 rules to coordinate work among the supervisory commissions, judicial and law enforcement departments, ensuring each move is based in law,” he said.

Li Chengyan, head of Peking University’s Center for Anti-Corruption Studies, said supervisory committees have been established to upgrade the fight against graft and make it more standardized.

Zhu Lijia, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance, said it is the time to extend the pilot program across the country, and he expects clearer rules on the operation of the supervisory system.