The number of people engaged in the fields of science and technology also has grown remarkably in China. In 1985, some 1.29 million personnel were engaged in science and technology in China. By 2002, that number had jumped to 21.86 million professional technical personnel working in state-owned enterprises and institutions nationwide, 5 times the 1978 figure. Since 1978, over 400,000 persons have studied abroad, and about 100,000 of them have returned to China to lead in scientific and technological fields. More than 50 percent of the academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering studied abroad and returned to China in the past dozen years.
