Recruiting in China

At the 2006 Biological Economy Summit held in Beijing last Saturday, Wu Zhongze, a senior official from the Ministry of Science and Technology, said that in order to build China into a nation with advanced biological technologies and a large biological industry, China encourages companies and research institutes to directly hire top-notch scientists and engineers from overseas. In this way, China can gradually build up a world first-class research team and upgrade researchers¡¯ general strength in biotechnological field.

He said that to this end China needs to take a series of important measures. Among them, personnel strategy would stand out as the most important one. This strategy covers three aspects: first, to directly hire high-grade scientific researchers from overseas and attract senior Chinese scientific personnel to come back to make their contributions; second, to apply an open recruiting system to some key work posts, such as laboratory directors, heads of key research institutes, and other senior posts in scientific field; third, through the national 863 program (the National High Technology Research and Development Program), and the national 973 program (the Major State Basic Research Development Program), to train some excellent scientific personnel and some internationally recognized team researchers.

China¡¯s general biological strength is at the forefront among developing countries. China now has over 200 biotechnological research institutes and over 30,000 researchers working in biological field. In recent years, while traditional biological industry is still in the leading position, modern biological industry is emerging rapidly and new biological technologies are mushrooming. According to a rough calculation, China has over 7,300 companies working in biotechnological field. Among them, 3,000 have grown to become the key companies in modern biological field, generating 60 billion yuan worth of output every year.