At the two sessions, the governmental work report pointed out to lead the transformation and upgrade of real economy with innovation. Efforts will be made in deepening talent development system reform, carrying out more efficient talent introduction policies to pool global talent and fully ignite the enthusiasm of scientific researchers.  

 

Since last year, Guangzhou has continuously strengthened the policy support to talent introduction and clustering. The policies including Opinions on Speeding up Pooling Industrial Leaders and four supportive measures, Opinions on Guangzhou’s Acceleration of Human Resource Service Development and Policies on Guaranteeing Public Leasing Houses had been launched successively, and enhanced Guangzhou’s attraction and influence to global talent.

 

Sci-tech innovation depends on talent support. Guangzhou will continue accelerating the construction of a city with powerful talent and a highland with competitive talent. The development strategy of “talent of foremost importance” will stress on the direction of “high-end, sophistication, cutting-edge and shortage remedy”, intensify the development of industrial leading talent, focus on the introduction of brains, capitals and technologies at the same time, and continue enhancing the introduction efforts of overseas talent.

 

Honored “the most attractive Chinese city to foreign talent” three times within five years

“OCS offers fairly abundant scientific research cooperation opportunities, I am full of confidence in carrying out production, study and research cooperation in Guangdong. I collected lots of information on potential cooperation at the convention and will share with more scientific researchers when I’m back,” said Alexander Vasilyevich Kuchen, telecommunication academician of Russian Academy of Sciences and director of the board of Russian Chemometrics Society. It is his 2^nd participation of Guangzhou Convention of Overseas Chinese Scholars in Science and Technology (OCS). In his opinion, Guangzhou, a city with fairly high marketization, provides many opportunities for paired production, study and research cooperation.

 

At the end of last year, the Convention on Exchange of Overseas Talents (EOT) was upgraded to OCS and positioned as a more internationalized platform, winning favors of more overseas talent. According to official statistics, OCS received 20-odd renowned domestic and foreign academicians, and 3,000 overseas talent, which was higher than the number in the previous year. Participants with a doctoral degree accounted for 65% of the total, and participants intending to return back China for start-ups accounted for 70% of the total. At the convention, 322 enterprises including some Fortune 500 corporations offered about 17,000 high-level jobs for high-end talent.

 

Since last year, Guangzhou has attached importance to talent issues. The 11^th CPC Congress of Guangzhou pointed out to speed up the construction of a talent highland. Talent is the first resource and the core element to improve urban competitiveness. Talent development will be deemed as strategic base to strengthen the efforts in talent investment, improve talent ecological chain and pool global talent for our development.

 

At the beginning of this year, Guangzhou launched a new-round policies for public leasing apartments guarantee and made the first move in improving talent ecological environment.

 

Different from the previous basic housing guarantee for the middle- and low-income groups, these policies expanded the “welfare” coverage to newly employed university students, young professional technicians, basic public service staff members and other basic and innovative talent. According to statistics, the net increase of high-tech enterprises in Guangzhou was above 2,800 last year, achieving a growth of 960%, making the total to 4,700 and ranking the top among China’s sub-provincial cities in terms of growth rate. Meanwhile, Guangzhou ranks the first in the number of universities and R&D institutions in the province, and owns nearly 3 million talent with education above senior professional colleges. The city’s enormous corps of high-end enterprises, universities and R&D institutions have pooled several million R&D and administrative talent. Thus, powerful housing support policies are required.

 

According to the related director of Guangzhou Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, Guangzhou has 77 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, four foreign experts who have won the laurel of Friendship Award, and 62,000 international students in Guangzhou by the end of last year. It has been rated the Most Attractive Chinese City to Foreign Talent for three times in five years.

 

Investing RMB3.5billion, “1+4” policies for talent introduction and fostering

 

Dr. Han Chao was among the shortlist of the government sponsored overseas study programme of Guangzhou Elite Programme in 2014 and studied at Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie for his doctorate. During his stay in France, he joined a R&D team under China’s1000-Talent Plan and participated in the development of tumor liquid biopsy, in addition to completing the scientific research subjects for the doctorate. This project is a blood test that detects evidence of cancer in the circulation and will replace the traditional aspiration biopsy.

 

With efforts of different parties in the early stage, the negotiation with venture capitals and the early-stage financing have been completed for the project. Meanwhile, it has applied for the Pearl River Talent Entrepreneurship Leading Team of Guangdong together with Daan Gene last year. At present the project has entered the landing stage and will be located in Guangzhou International Bio-Island. The project that Dr. Han has participated in has been a successful case of Guangzhou’s “1+4” talent policies and related talent programs to transfer the scientific and technological achievements.

 

In March 2016, the CPC Guangzhou Municipal Committee and Guangzhou municipal government issued the Opinions on Speeding up Pooling Industrial Leaders and four supportive documents (“1+4” policy documents) to solicit talents from home and abroad. In the five years from 2016 to 2020, Guangzhou will input about RMB3.5 billion to support 500 innovation and startup leaders in major industrial sectors, 1,000 industrial high-end talent, 2,000 talent in urgent need each year to form a phenomenon that talent and industries are in virtuous interaction and talent leads industries while industries attract talent in return.

 

The “1+4” talent polices can be divided into 11 categories, said the related director of Guangzhou Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, for example the innovation and entrepreneurship leading team funding, innovation leader funding, innovation and entrepreneurship service leader funding, outstanding industrial talent subsidy, industrial development and innovation talent subsidy, and Guangzhou talent green card application. Meanwhile, a series of talent programs such as the current “Elite Programme”, postdoctoral fellow fostering program and “1000-foreign expert plan” have been implemented in combination to boost the industrial development. Last year Guangzhou has issued the application guidelines for 11 projects and received 136 applications for the innovation leader funding, 5,311 applications for the industrial development and innovation talent subsidy which include 2,282 applications for the high-end talent subsidy and 3,029 for the talent in urgent need. Thus the project funding is predicted to exceed RMB150 million in total.

 

The statistic shows that with implementation of the “1+4” talent policies, by the end of 2016, 20 innovation leaders and 2,994 industrial high-end talent and urgent need talent passed the expert review, and 34 enterprise postdoctoral fellows and 50 enterprise high-end talent received the oversea training funding. Guangzhou received 1,336 applications for green cards and 1,220 have been granted. The industrial leading talent pooling effect has achieved initial success.

 

While the Pearl River Delta cities resort to universities, how can Guangzhou get a head start in “talent introduction”?

 

In November 2016, Shunde District, Foshan, launched construction of the satellite city of the Higher Education Mega City to pair with Guangzhou. In February 2017, the district has extended an olive branch to Guangzhou and introduced Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, South Chine Normal University, and Southern Medical University to cooperate in building a batch of hospital and school projects.

 

Behind the frequent courting efforts to renowned universities is the yearning for talent. In fact the cities of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) are competing for quality education and talent resources. Eight districts of Shenzhen are establishing universities competitively; Foshan has set forth to build high quality universities of technology and engineering with extraordinary measures; Zhongshan has planned to input RMB3 billion in building an international university area during the 13^th Five-Year Plan period. Moreover, Guangzhou has declared recently to introduce one to two international renowned universities to cooperate in running schools in the city. It has made progress in the construction of the international campus of South China University of Technology.

 

The PRD accelerates innovation-driven development, and efforts for introducing talent are as intensive as investment promotion

 

Prof. Cai Jian, executive president of the Institute of Innovation, Peking University, said at an interview that talent and education are the best advantages of Guangzhou and the other cities in Guangdong cannot compare with it on this aspect. Guangzhou is home to not only the leading universities such as Sun Yat-sen University, but also a batch of high-end research institutes such as Guangzhou Branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is critical to give a full play to the card of talent.

 

So far Guangzhou has been home to 97% of the national key subjects, 80% universities (colleges), 70% scientific and technical personnel and 95% doctorate holders of Guangdong Province. The outstanding scientific and education resources enable Guangzhou to be a “cradle” of the innovation talent. The achievements made by universities and research institutes in the city are important resources for Guangzhou to build the international scientific and technological innovation hub.

 

“In the nearly 20 years since its establishment, OCS has become an important platform for introducing overseas innovation talents. Robin Li of Baidu Group, Li Ge of Wuxi AppTec and Wang Jian of BGI, among others, returned China and embarked on the entrepreneurship through the platform.” Through the media of OCS, Guangzhou has built the domestic and overseas talent development platforms while vigorously fostering and gathering strategic scientists, entrepreneurs, industrial leading talent and teams, engineers, high-skilled talent, high-end professionals and interdisciplinary talent and other talent of “high-end, sophistication, cutting-edge and shortage remedy” on the basis of the advantage on education resources centering on the economic development. Moreover, Guangzhou has set up the precise matching mechanism for the talent fostering and enterprise demand to foster and introduce more high-end talents under the 1000-Talent Plan, “10000 Talent Plan” and the “Pearl River Talent Plan” etc. 

 

Guangzhou, facing the new round of talent competition, has obviously accelerated its steps in building the talent highland. The 13^th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Human Resources and Social Security issued recently pointed out that the city will implement the “talent of foremost importance” development strategy, promote talent development system reform and policy innovation, highlight the orientation on “high-end, sophistication, cutting-edge and shortage remedy”, enhance the industrial pacemaker development, structure the high-quality talent gathering highland and form the talent advantages with international competitiveness. By 2020, Guangzhou will own 4.04 million human resources in total with diploma and above education background and 1.95 million professionals. And the proportion of high-end, intermediate and preliminary level talent will be at 12:46:42. The city will introduce 80,000 overseas returnees and 15,000 foreign talents in total by then.

 

Source: Translated from Invest Guangzhou, March 13, 2017