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SCMP Reporter

Beijing, the spider at the centre of the mainland's bureaucratic web, wants to be a cyber city, too.

 Computer prodigies and fast-talking Nasdaq-smart venture capitalists and their money are being lured with Beijing residency cards.

 For most of the past 50 years, Beijing's leaders were busy drawing up campaigns to exile western-educated intellectuals to labour camps and send 'educated youth' to learn from the peasants in the countryside.

 This month, the city's Bureau of Personnel revealed the first group of non-Beijing hi-tech employees had been approved for a Beijing residence work permit.

 New regulations were announced in June and six weeks later the invitations were in the post.

 Soon, it will take just 10 days to process an application.

 Suddenly, it seems every mainland city is competing to attract exactly the same sort of migrant.

 The candidates must be graduates and specialists in the hotly promoted fields, namely information technology, electronics, new materials, bio-engineering, medicine, environmental protection or energy technologies.

 The red carpet will be laid out especially for those working abroad, preferably in Silicon Valley or the like.

 Beijing is heavily promoting its own alternative, the Zhongguancun area, between the country's top universities.

 This area in northwest Beijing, already teeming with hi-tech companies and computer manufacturers, is being singled out to receive the best government guidance and help.

 Until now, some companies could not hire the right people because they could not provide them with residency cards.

 'Most of the companies in Zhongguancun will benefit from this new policy,' said a representative of Legend Computers.

 'For us, it makes the lives of our non-Beijing resident employees easier. It will also attract more employees.'   One in 10 staff at Legend, the mainland's personal computer giant, does not hold a Beijing residency.

 New regulations specify anyone with a work permit and a job is entitled to apply for permanent residency after three years but only if their employer nominates them.

 Poaching, which is notorious among competing start-ups, would become more difficult.

 'If an employee does quit, we have the legal right to take away their work and residence permit,' the Legend representative said.

 'It is more of a psychological barrier preventing an employee from leaving. If an employee really wants to leave, this work permit will not keep him with the company.'   The city's public security police conduct house-to-house searches in a bid to expel thousands of non-residents, including construction workers and rubbish collectors.

 In the past 10 years, Beijing has clearly felt threatened by the hordes of low-skilled migrants, perhaps as many as three million, who moved into the capital in search of work.

 They crowded into buses and trains, settled in unregulated slums and caused an outbreak of crime, raising fear among the city's white-collar bureaucrats.

  There are no such fears about the computer nerds whom Beijing hopes will come in great numbers.

 'There is no limit to the number of people who will be approved for the work residence permit,' an employee at the Beijing Bureau of Personnel's allocation department said.

 Yet Beijing, which once reputedly enjoyed the best of everything, may no longer offer charms to rival Shanghai, Shenzhen, or for that matter, Hong Kong.



Beijing plays residency card in bid to fulfil its cyber-city ambitions