South China's Guangdong Province will recruit more than 6,000 experts to assist in a technological overhaul of the local economy.

These experts will be assigned to 923 companies in the Pearl River Delta as the government pushes to upgrade the region's manufacturing-based industry, Friday's China Daily reported.

The English language newspaper attributed Guangdong's rapid development over the past three decades to its "numerous labor-intensive manufacturing businesses", saying the province now wants to restructure its economy to "one based on technology".

The province received more than 2,000 applications from local businesses that wished to recruit these senior professionals, but only 923 succeeded, it said.

The experts, including 1,087 professors and scholars and more than 5,000 university graduates, are known as "science and technology commissioners". Some of them began working with companies last month, while others are expected to start in July, the newspaper quoted Guangdong's vice governor Song Hai as saying.

One of the businesses, Zhicheng Group, an electric appliances producer in Dongguan, has established research and development contracts with several prestigious universities in China.

Its manager Liu Zhiliang said experts from universities could design updated and practical products to satisfy the customers' growing demands.

(Xinhua News Agency May 1, 2009)