Guizhou province has announced that it is working with China's Western Returned Scholars Association to support overseas Chinese returning to start a businesses in Guizhou, according to participants at a group discussion on returning scholars, in Guiyang, the provincial capital, on July 27.

In addressing the gathering, Qi Zaiyuan, the association's managing director, said that they want to make Guizhou more familiar to returning Chinese and encourage them to set up a businesses here.

The secretary general of the association's Russian branch, Jia Mengqiu, said that he is amazed at the rapid development every time he visits Guizhou and that he believes that, with a better investment and development environment, more enterprises will settle here.

More than 3-million Chinese have studied abroad since China began its reforms and opening-up three decades ago and about half of them have chosen to start a career back in China. Not only that, but more overseas Chinese have decided to start their career in Guiyang in recent times, instead of the standard choices of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, because of Guizhou's rapid development and certain advantages, and the increasingly fierce competition and unpleasant environment in those bigger, more developed cities.

The Western Returned Scholars Association and Chinese Overseas-Educated Scholars Association were founded in 1913 and are the oldest and largest organization of their kind to help Chinese return to China after studying abroad.