Jinan University in China began to build a key project of Chinese-foreign relations and Overseas Chinese in September 1998. Because the project was among the university's key projects, it received much attention and financial aid from school authorities. The Overseas Chinese Research Institute undertook the whole task to design and build a database. Specifically, the project was to build a specialized database on overseas Chinese research. The vice-director of the institute himself designed the structural frame of this overseas Chinese research specialized database. After one year of work, the structure of the database, with almost 1000 data entries, has been finished. The database was demonstrated to an audience, showing how the information is entered, sorted, and retrieved. It was highly praised when experts from schools and foreign countries saw the demonstration.

        The main characteristics of the database are direct-perceived, flexible retrieval and specialized information. The database has three sub-databases, including a database of full text, a database of tables of contents, and a database of professional books. The information in the database allows long-distance retrieval. It is easy to enter new data and modify existing information. It has a large amount of information and can be retrieved by date, region, country, keyword, title, author, and publication. It also supports retrieval without exact key word matching.

        It is estimated that the final frame of the database can be completed and the information contained therein can reach more than 30,000 entries by the end of August 2000 and the database is planned to contain more than 50,000 entries by the end of August 2001. All the designers and builders of the database feel confident in the development of the database and are very dedicated to this project.