Chinese students head home to find jobs: Report

BEIJING: The number of young Chinese returning home after completing university studies abroad has soared as the financial crisis has made it harder to find jobs overseas, state media said Thursday.

A total of 69,300 students decided to try their luck back home in 2008, up 56 percent from a year earlier, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing the education ministry.

"The global financial crisis had made it more difficult for overseas Chinese students to find jobs outside China," Xinhua quoted ministry official Zhang Xiuqin as saying.

Zhang said the ministry had set up a special fund to support short-term research projects by Chinese overseas scholars. He was not quoted as saying how big the fund was.

Ministry statistics show that from 1978 to the end of 2008, more than 1.39 million Chinese studied abroad, with 390,000 of them returning home, Xinhua said.