Contracts for 24 cooperation projects were signed on Wednesday in Shenyang between enterprises from northeast China's Liaoning Province and various foreign firms.

The cooperation projects, worth a total of 862 million U.S. dollars, were signed at the Conference on International Exchange of Professionals (CIEP) which opened here on Wednesday.

About 700 foreign delegations from 30 countries - including Russia, the United States, Japan and France - are attending the conference.

The CIEP has already been held four times in Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu Province. An important channel for introducing foreign innovations to China, it has already led to the inking of 11,800 agreements.

This is the first time the CIEP has been held in Shenyang. The event is expected to play a role in revitalizing China's old north-eastern industrial base by attracting top-level foreign expertise and technologies.

The 24 projects signed to date, plus 60 more worth 300 million U.S. dollars that are being discussed, cover areas such as manufacturing and machinery, electronics and electrical power, the petroleum and chemical industries, metallurgy and mining.

In contrast to the previous four conferences, this year's CIEP has drawn a large number of delegations from Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, with about 350 participants and 2,000 high-tech projects.

The conference was sponsored by the State Council's Office of the Leading Group for Revitalizing Northeast China and Other Old Industrial Bases, the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs (SAFEA) and the government of Liaoning Province.

The number of foreign experts introduced to China has been growing rapidly. During the early years of China's reform and opening up in the late 1970s, China only introduced about 1,000 foreign experts and professionals each year. The number has grown to 200,000 to 400,000 in recent years.

Last year China introduced 340,000 foreign experts and professionals, according to SAFEA statistics.

Source: Xinhua