2068 letters of intent have been signed at the Conference on International Exchange of Professionals (CIEP) to provide foreign expertise to China.

They included 1245 invitations to foreign economic and technical experts, and 207 invitations to foreign cultural and educational experts. The other 616 agreements were for Chinese people to go abroad for training.

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

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 from 200,000 to 400,000 in recent years.

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

Foreign experts have made a massive contribution to China's development, said SAFEA spokesman Liu Yongzhi at the conference.

The SAFEA has approved 370 foreign professional exchange businesses in China as well as 5183 domestic organizations that are entitled to introduce foreign experts.

This is the fifth CIEP conference. The previous four were all held in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province.

A key channel for introducing foreign expertise to China, the CIEP already has 11,800 agreements to its name.

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.

About 700 foreign delegations from 30 countries - including Russia, the United States, Japan and France - are attending the conference, exhibiting more than 2000 high-tech cooperation projects covering manufacturing and machinery, electronics and electrical power, the petroleum and chemical industries, metallurgy and mining, medical care and health, environmental protection, information technology and agriculture and architecture.

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.

Source: Xinhua