“Now is a golden opportunity for Chinese scientists to return to China,” says Chunli Bai, a vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, explaining the academy's plans dramatically to reorganize its 123 institutes over the next 13 years. The number of institutes and the 68,000 permanent employees of the academy will be drastically reduced by the year 2010, but 600 scientists will be recruited over the next three years (see Nature 394, 7; 1998).

“We are looking for bright young people under 45, most of them from overseas. We want people who are good in science but also people who have good management skills, for example, people from industry experienced in corporate management,” Bai explains. “We expect about half to be pure scientists, but that is not a precise figure.”

The recruits will be offered accommodation, equipment, graduate students and 2 million yuan (US$240,000) in start-up research funds. They will be given the title ‘research professor’, which will entitle them to supervise graduate students. The positions will be long term on a ‘tenure track’ system. Scientists will be assessed every four years and if they fail to meet standards they will be “out”, says Bai. Only after passing three such assessments (after 12 years) will lifetime employment be offered.

To compensate for the academy's rather low salaries, the recruits will be given performance-based bonuses. “We will take care of them,” says Bai, and give them “more and more support”.

There will also be many openings in the academy for ‘mobile’ researchers, such as graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and visiting professors. The academy hopes to more than double the number of such ‘mobile’ people to 10,000 in the next three years, and to further boost the number to 30,000 by 2010.