Overseas returnees rush to start businesses in China

 Accentuated by her black framed glasses, Cai Na, an overseas returnee born in the 1980s has concentrated on her lab experiment in Changsha Yuelu Science and Technology Zone, Hunan Province.

Receiving her Ph.D. from Japan, Cai headed to the United States and found rewarding work. However, that all ended when Cai heard China was encouraging entrepreneurial start-ups.

“This is the best time to start my business,” she said in her lab, which focuses on the application of stem cells.

Returning to the country in 2014, Cai decided to open her lab in Changsha after a certain period of investigation and registration proved unexpectedly efficient in May.

Encouraged by the lab’s growth, Cai plans a three-pronged strategy for her company -- market expansion, strategic cooperation for important research as well as the enlargement of employment.

Yet the strategic development is based on an even broader view as the returnee aims to improve the personal clinical condition by applying the lab research in practice, China News Service reported.

Actually Cai’s story is one of many examples. Yao Beier, 34, studied in London from the age of 18. Upon his graduation, he worked for an international education consultancy, and later established his own training agency. Yet at the age of 28, seeking to join the stunning transformation of China, he came back to Changsha to set up the first English training agency with the help of his family and friends.

“At that time, every single step was difficult,” said Yao, who claimed he was not from a family with a strong background. “But now the stimulus policies for start-ups make me feel more confident to run the business.”

With the preferential policies of the governments, which were required to streamline official procedures to boost entrepreneurship and innovation, Yao has opened three branches in Changsha. According to him, as long as he collects enough funds, he will open more training agencies in third-and-fourth-tier cities.

“I’ll apply the freshest pedagogic theories that I learnt abroad to China to benefit more domestic students,” he said.

Returnee Wang Hongjian, a post-1980s student who used to study in Japan, got a job as a director of the international department of a key middle-school in Changsha in 2011. But two years later he resigned to become a farmer.

“I am unwilling to see the opportunity slipping in my life,” said Wang, who collected 2 million yuan (US$312,500) to contract a land about 1 million square meters.

He did not run the farm smoothly in the beginning, but his business started to burgeon when an official youth organization helped him get loans from the Postal Savings Bank of China. With sufficient funds, Wang overcame the financial bottleneck and now the program has drawn the cooperation of 60 local farmers.

According to Wang, he hopes he can lead the farmers to be rich in a path of sustainable agricultural development.

China has seen roughly three million students study abroad since the adoption of the reform and opening up policies some three decades ago. Among them 1.4 million students have chosen to return and a majority of 1.1 million were returned in the past six years, meanwhile, the growth keeps soaring, China News Service reported.