CHENGDU is dedicated to attracting overseas returnees and professionals to contribute to the city's high-tech industries, including the bio-pharmaceutical sector, video games and electronic information.

Local government-sponsored programs, such as the Thousand Talents program, has contributed to a large return rate, as have other incentive programs.

Chengdu also grants start-up capital, project funds and preferential policies to elite overseas returnees and experts who bring cutting-edge technology and advanced business concepts to Chengdu.

While enjoying the privileges from the government, overseas returnees also find Chengdu suitable for business start-ups as labor and production costs continue to rise in coastal cities.

Tianfu Software Park and Tianfu Life Science Park in Chengdu's Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone are two prominent places that have gathered several hundred companies set up by overseas returnees and PhD holders.

Shanghai Daily visited three of these companies and met their CEOs, whose age ranges from 20-something to 40, and heard their experiences in starting up their own business in Chengdu.

Totally serious about online games

Shi Dawei

Co-founder of Chengdu Relicure Interactive Technology, creating online games

Chengdu is a hotbed of gaming companies. Many famous domestic game companies, including Tencent, Shanda and Giant, have set up offices in the city, attracting young people with the dream of working in the gaming industry.

Shi Dawei, along with his Chengdu Relicure Interactive Technology business partner and staff, has been in Chengdu for three years, though it has taken longer for the 26-year-old Cambridge University graduate to realize his dream: creating an online game.

On the first floor of a building in the Tianfu Software Park, some 30 staff members are working on incomplete frames and images of the game's characters. The good news is that the game engine is coded, which means the game will be ready in a year or two.

Shi, a Shanghai native, worked for China International Capital Corporation for a year after graduation. He got the idea to start a game company in August 2009 and shared his plan with Shen Bo, a former classmate at Cambridge who is a Chengdu native. Together, they formed the business.

"Shen Bo and I share the same interest in games. Unlike older entrepreneurs who have money to set up investment-based business, our company is more technology-based," Shi said.

The pair have poured in about 3 million yuan but haven't generated any profit yet.

"If we were in Shanghai, the costs would have been much higher. Chengdu is much cheaper in terms of labor force and daily cost," Shi said.

As overseas returnees and young start-up businessmen, they receive support from the Chengdu government.

They also have no problem recruiting employees, owing to the ready supply of Chengdu's software graduates whose salary expectations are much lower than those in Shanghai.

Shi said more than 80 percent of their capital was used to pay salaries. Most employees are loyal to the company and they have confidence in their action online game.

"We've made quite a lot of detours along the way to creating the game. I majored in maths and Shen majored in computer science. Both of us are newcomers to game production.

"All we did in the past three years was learn by doing. Fortunately, we have support from the government and we are quick learners," Shi said.

Shi said some game companies in the park have turned to make quick money by creating mobile games and apps, but that path does not appeal.

"We will not change our idea to make web games," he insisted. "But we might sell our game engine to a big company."

Earthquake early warning system may save lives

Dr Wang Tun

Director of Institute of Care-life, inventor of the first earthquake early warning system in China

On hearing that Sichuan had been hit by an earthquake in 2008, Wang Tun, a native of the province working as a post-doctorate member of staff at the Austria Academy of Sciences in Innsbruck, began searching on the Internet in an attempt to discover why there were no earthquake pre-warnings to help reduce the impact of such incidents.

"I went back to Sichuan in June, one month after the earthquake, and established a company to develop an early warning quake system," said Wang.

"There were still many aftershocks across Sichuan at that time. But it was the best time to test if the system was effective," Wang added.

A graduate of Zhejiang University, Wang completed his PhD in theoretical mechanics at Chinese Academy of Sciences and PhD in Physics at University of Connecticut in the United States.

Wang, 37, gave up working in the prestigious Austria Academy of Sciences and returned to his hometown because "the country needs me now."

"I'd never learned as a child that Sichuan could be hit by earthquake. The last time Sichuan was hit, I was only two years old."

"The quake in 2008 has changed the lives of too many people," he said.

But many people said Wang was crazy because he was an outsider in this field.

His family were also unhappy that he gave up a well-respected job to start a niche business with no certainty of success.

But Wang insisted on establishing the Institute of Care-life. He borrowed 3 million yuan (US$481,127) from friends in the United States and created the first "Earthquake Early Warning System (EEWS)" in China.

Its slogan is "for the next big quake, China has EEWS."

The project was strongly supported by Chengdu government which granted Wang 200,000 yuan in December, 2008 as start-up capital for an overseas returnee.

"Chengdu government also supported me on rent and gave me technology funds to help with the research," Wang said.

The system has acquired its own intellectual property rights and is used by Sichuan Seismological Bureau and a number of other cities, including Chuzhou City of eastern Anhui Province and Harbin, capital city of Heilongjiang Province.

The early warning system is also available in the form of app from the Apple store which can be downloaded by individuals to detect quakes around them.

"To date, no one can predict earthquakes," said Wang.

"But our early warning system can alert users 10 seconds in advance so that they can take measures to escape and lower casualties."

Start-up finds right prescription in bid to develop new medicines

Dr Li Jin

Chairman and CEO of HitGen, a life science company focusing on new drugs

A native of Chongqing, Li finished undergraduate studies at Sichuan University and left for studies in the United Kingdom in 1985. He did not return to China for 20 years, during which he completed his PhD in macromolecular sciences at Aston University, post-doctoral research in theoretical biochemistry at Manchester University and worked at Protherics and AstraZeneca.

He held director-level positions in computational sciences and global compound sciences at AstraZeneca during 2001-2012. He left his job at the end of last May and moved to Chengdu where he established HitGen, a bio-tech company focusing on hit identification and lead generation during the early stage of drug discovery.

"Biopharma companies have mushroomed throughout China in recent years. I saw the fast growth of these companies in China during my five years' collaborative and outsourcing management work with companies in China, Russia and India. But not until I attended a BioTianfu forum in Chengdu in 2010 did I germinate the idea of setting up my own company," Li said.

Li contacted his former postgraduate classmates in Sichuan University, who helped him find investors and contacts within the government to apply for incentive programs for overseas returnees.

HitGen was registered last February with a total investment of US$15 million at Tianfu Life Science Park. Recruitment started in May last year. The company now has 66 staff members and is still expanding. It went operational last September.

Though Li has British nationality, he still received support from the Chengdu government, support that largely swayed him to start the company in Chengdu.

"I investigated many places, including Shanghai. A major reason for me to choose Chengdu was that we found a powerful investor and the Chengdu High-Tech Development Zone government valued the innovation and commercial potential of the project," Li said.

Li also said that Chengdu has a very good environment for life science and bio-tech research, due to its integrated connection between enterprises, colleges and research institutes.

"Chengdu has a sound basis in this aspect. The government support is also attractive as it has provided us with project funding and various subsidies," Li said.

"We are developing a unique technological platform for innovative drug research, which is good for a new company from the management perspective," he added.

As the father of two, 49-year-old Li said it was a very difficult decision for him at first to work away from his family, who are still in the UK.

"My family support me a lot. When you are not at home often, there are a lot of challenges. For example, my wife has to take care of the two children alone. They've sacrificed a lot but they always tell me they are coping well," Li said.

Li met some difficulties at the early stage of setting up the business.

"These were mostly to do with the flow of processes and procedures that I was unfamiliar with," Li said. "But my team and friends here helped solve them all."

After establishing the company, Li brought expats and overseas returnees to his company to work in Chengdu, a city where foreigners were rarely seen in the past.

In the past 10 years, global drug sales have increased by 160 percent. Investment in technology research and development has also grown by 80 percent, said Li.

However, the number of new drugs going to the market declined by 43 percent, Li added.

"Nowadays, many pharmaceutical companies are trying to reduce the spiraling costs of discovering and developing new drugs," said Li. "We are providing a more cost-effective and flexible platform to support early drug discovery research.

"We focus on providing lead compounds, which are essential for developing new drugs. Our products are open to both domestic market and international market," Li said.

Li said, in addition to customized requests, his company is also working in partnership with other firms in China and abroad to discover new drug candidates to treat common diseases in Asia, such as liver and lung cancers, as well as cardiovascular diseases.