Among all overseas returnees, one group that stands out consists of Chinese entrepreneurs who have launched their own businesses after studying in the West. Armed with experience working at multinational corporations (MNCs), they seized the unique growth opportunities in a reformed China to start their own enterprises. For example, Li Yanhong (1968), a graduate of Peking University and the State University of New York, worked at Dow Jones and Infoseek before founding Baidu, a company that beat Google in Chinese Internet searches within a few years; Fu Chengyu (1951), after studied at the Northeast Petroleum Institute in China and the University of Southern California, led the China National Offshore Oil Co. into an era of growth and prosperity; Shi Zhengrong (1963), a graduate of the University of New South Wales in Australia, returned to China to launch Suntech Power, a leading solar energy company listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the largest solar module manufacturer in the world. In sum, they represent the bright future of China, and that future is beginning to take shape. These business leaders have reshaped the country’s economic landscape and begun to play a more active role on the social and political stages. As agents of change, they will have a significant impact on China and the rest of the world in years to come. Haigui, a pun on haiwai guilai, meaning “returning from overseas” (Wang，2005), is a very popular term in China today. Its pronunciation also suggests the Chinese phrase for sea turtles returning to shore after leaving to grow up in the sea. To most people in the Western world, the notion of “returnees” is a foreign concept. In the US, Canada, Europe and Australia, a person who studies abroad almost always returns to the home country. However, for students from large developing countries such as China and India, this is not always the case. Out of more than one and one half million Chinese who went abroad during the last three decades, between two-thirds to three-quarters decided to settle in the countries where they studied, a simple fact that makes the subject of this book much more striking. However, in recent years, both the number and the rate of returnees have steadily increased. As one of the fastest growing economies in the world, China provides unprecedented opportunities to overseas returnees, who are increasingly recognized as a driving force in the country’s economic development
