Over the past three years, the city's overseas human resources office alone registered a total of 4,200 returned students, including 1,075 last year, according to statistics provided by the office.

Most of them are employed in its high-tech sector, and to date, a total of 248 high-tech projects have been established in the Shenzhen start-up park for overseas trained people.

Some of these people have established businesses both at home and abroad.

This practice was dubbed by some Chinese economists as the "Dumbbell Pattern," which is believed to help the overseas trained investors to better utilize domestic resources and follow the latest developments in the world technology market.

Shenzhen Appeon is an example of the pattern. The Chairman and CEO of the company, Shi Zheng and Gaoyang respectively, had studied and worked in Silicon Valley in the United States before they started their own business, Appeon, in China at the end of 1999. Now Appeon, with its headquarters in the British Virgin Islands, has three subsidiaries, in the United States and Shenzhen and Hong Kong.

It is estimated that the enterprises will generate 1 billion yuan in output value this year.

(Xinhua News Agency April 27, 2003)