Over 80 percent of overseas-returned Chinese pick Beijing as their preferred city to work in, Sunday's Beijing Youth Daily quoted a survey as saying.

More than half of the surveyed say they would only work in Beijing and about 20 percent prefer Shanghai, according to a report issued by the Beijing Orient Huibo Human Resource Consulting Services.

Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Xi'an are also choices for talented people returning from overseas but very few want to work in the west.

Overseas returned talents are mostly wanted in sectors like finance, trade, culture, education and media, but are less sought after in the real estate industry due to their lack of knowledge of government policies and measures as well as domestic industrial regulations.

By the end of 2006, more than one million Chinese had studied abroad, and 26 percent of them had returned to the country. Last year, 42,000 people returned to China, up 21 percent on 2005, according to statistics from the Ministry of Education.

The survey was conducted among 1,216 overseas-returned Chinese and 452 companies.