The Thousand Talents Recruitment Programme (1,000 Talents Plan) is a programme established by China’s central government in 2008 for recruiting high-level scientists and talents from overseas.
Specifically, it offers significant financial support to high-level overseas scientists and experts who decide to relocate to China for conducting research in high-tech industries or in new fields at the frontiers of science, or to participate in the country’s major scientific programmes, key laboratories, state-owned enterprises, state-owned financial institutions, or high-tech development zones and industrial parks.
The programme consists of several categories targeting a different pool of experts, including one exclusively targeting foreign scientists.
Several lower-level administrations (e.g. Shanghai) also established local-level 1,000 Thousand Plans for recruiting overseas talents within their jurisdictions. These will be introduced in the “Local Funding Programmes” section of this website.
Note: the 1,000 Talents Plan has been replaced by the National High-end Foreign Expert Recruitment Plan (link to first call published in January 2019)