China considering laws to attract overseas talent

China plans to launch a more competitive system to attract overseas talent, which includes regulations and laws to manage foreigners who work in China and their application of permanent residence, the State Council announced.

China will push forward legislation on issuing permanent residence to foreigners, lift the threshold for technical talent to apply for permanent residence, and build a mechanism on skilled migration, according to a guideline on accelerating innovation issued by the State Council on Monday.

Foreigners who obtain permanent residence in China will be granted the same benefits enjoyed by Chinese citizens when they start innovative businesses, the guideline said.

Immigration observers applauded the guideline. "Establishing laws on skilled migration is the best way to attract overseas talent," Wang Huiyao, director general of the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), told the Global Times.

In the past decades, China's development has been relying on internal migration from less-developed regions to coastal cities. But China's "One Belt and One Road" initiatives require participation of more overseas talent, said Wang.

According to the guideline, foreigners who meet the criteria can enjoy preferential policies in applying for work permit, and their accompanying family members will also be given visas and residence permits. The age restrictions will also be lifted for high-level technological talent.

An annual report on China's migration status released by the CCG on Thursday said that there are 848,500 foreigners in China in 2013, accounting for 0.06 percent of the total population, while the figure in many Western countries exceeded 10 percent.

The guideline said that China also plans to establish a visiting scholar system to attract overseas talent for innovative research.

Liu Guofu, an expert on immigration law from the Beijing Institute of Technology, told the Global Times earlier that the current policy fails to keep outstanding foreign students in China. Many of Liu's foreign students are annoyed as they cannot find an internship in China, and it is almost impossible to obtain citizenship by working in China, he said.