A returnee from the US displays model trains he sells on his online store in Shanghai. NIU JING / FOR CHINA DAILY

Of the 674 companies listed on the ChiNext, a NASDAQ-style board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, one in 10 chairmen is an overseas returnee, National Business Daily reported Wednesday.

As of Aug 30, 674 publicly traded companies listed on the ChiNext had a total market value of 5.2 trillion yuan, according to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

From 1978 to 2016, a total of 4.59 million people went abroad to study, accounting for less than 0.5 percent of China's population. However, of the 674 companies listed on the ChiNext, 77 companies' chairmen are overseas returnees, or 11.4 percent of the total.

Most of them are male, born in the 1960s and 1970s and studied science and engineering in Europe or the United States from 1980 to 1990. They obtained master's degree and returned to start business between 2002 and 2003.

Of them, 54 are science students, accounting for 70.12 percent of all. Machinery is the top major, followed by physics, material science, biomedicine and electronic engineering.

In terms of country, 35 studied or worked in the United States, ranking first, while the others chose Singapore, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France.

High-end manufacturing has become an important sector for overseas returnees to start their business, the newspaper said.

Forty-eight, or 62.3 percent, of these listed companies focus on manufacturing, taking the top spot, followed by IT, medicine, environmental protection, energy, and media.