More and more overseas students are returning to Beijing's Zhongguancun Technology Park to set up new businesses, thanks to the high-tech zone's sound administrative and intellectual environment.

Statistics from the Administrative Committee of the Zhongguancun Technology Park revealed that by the end of the year 2002, there were 1,546 enterprises run by returned overseas students involving 1.5 billion yuan (US$180 million) in registration capital.

"These enterprises make up 10 per cent of the high-tech companies in Zhongguancun as a whole," said Liu Zhihua, vice-mayor of Beijing.

Last year, the profit ratio of the net assets of Zhongguancun's high-tech enterprises averaged 9.7 per cent.

The figure for the companies run by the returned overseas students hit 24.19 per cent.

"Since 1999, the Beijing municipal government has issued a series of preferential policies to attract overseas students to carry out business in Zhongguancun," said Liu.

The policies involved preferential land-use fees, tax cuts or exemptions, project financing support, streamlined foreign exchange administration, as well as residency registration and priority housing.

"To fully implement these policies, the service system for returned overseas students in Zhongguancun officially kicked off in July 2000," said Xia Yingqi, vice-director with the administrative committee.

Apart from the Zhongguancun Returned Overseas Students Service Centre, subsidiary parks in Fengtai and Haidian districts, Tsinghua University and Peking University have also set up outlets to provide consultancy, co-ordination, fund raising and real estate services for returned overseas students.

"And to help them know more about the current situation in their homeland and the environment of Zhongguancun, the service centre has set up liaison offices in Silicon Valley in the United States, Japan's Tokyo, Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Canada's Toronto," said Xia.

To stimulate the growth of start-ups, Zhongguancun established several business "incubators," covering 140,000 square metres, for returned overseas students. "And a specific fund was founded in 2001 to offer land rent subsidies to them in the incubators and to provide capital support for the returned overseas start-ups," Xia said.

So far, 180 such enterprises have received the subsidy or capital support at a cost of 16.46 million yuan (US$1.98 million).

And 20 secured banking loans thanks to the guarantee offered by the administrative committee.

(China Daily LIU JIE 02/01/2003)