A Scottish executive official at the British embassy in Beijing will encourage skilled workers to come to Scotland to work in electronics, IT and financial services.
The move, part of the Scottish executive’s plan to strengthen links with China, follows a visit to Beijing last month by finance minister Tom McCabe.
The planned influx would be the biggest since 32,000 eastern Europeans came to Scotland following EU enlargement.
Most of the immigrants from countries such as Latvia, Poland and the Czech Republic have been lured by higher salaries and have found work in fish-processing factories in the Highlands and southwest Scotland and also in the hospitality and catering industries.
But concerns have been raised over whether public services will be able to cope with the influx of Chinese workers.
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Last week, the British Medical Association warned that GPs were struggling to cope with the number of eastern Europeans who have come to Scotland.
Meanwhile, the Westminster government is under pressure to impose working restrictions on Bulgarians and Romanians hoping to enter the UK when the two countries join the EU next year.
Scotland is currently home to more than 16,000 Chinese, most of whom emigrated in the 1950s and 1980s. Many are Cantonese-speaking businessmen and their families from Hong Kong, who were worried about their future under Communism.
Last year, about 2,000 Chinese people, mostly from the Mandarin-speaking mainland, moved to live and work in Scotland under a number of initiatives including the Fresh Talent: Working in Scotland scheme, Scottish Networks International and Scottish Enterprise’s Talent Scotland.
The executive hopes to increase the number coming to Scotland by 10% each year until 2010. “The obvious attraction in Scotland to a skilled Chinese person would be financial,” said Dr Jackie Sheehan, associate professor at the Institute of Contemporary Chinese Studies at Nottingham University.
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The average salary in China is about £1,400 a year with a senior executive in a big company earning about £20,000 a year.
“Working in an English-speaking environment would be a big plus, as would a better standard of living,” Sheehan said.
While the population in Scotland is declining, China has 1.3 billion inhabitants. Its one-child policy dating from the 1970s is still in force to try to reduce the population.
Alan Mitchell, assistant director with Confederation of British Industry Scotland, said: “Chinese universities are producing large numbers of highly skilled graduates. I’m sure there would be a lot of benefit to the Scottish economy if some of them wanted to work and live here.
“However, it shouldn’t be seen as a reason not to continue effort to upskill and reskill the indigenous population.”