The 2017 Convention on Exchange of Overseas Talents and the 19th Guangzhou Convention of Overseas Chinese Scholars in Science and Technology (OCS) concluded successfully on December 21 in Guangzhou, marking this the largest ever OCS.
The two-day convention received an overwhelming response with more than 3,500 academics and professionals from overseas participating, around 63% of whom are doctor’s degree holders. Coming mainly from America, Canada, Britain, Australia among other countries, these talents brought 2,000 projects in a variety of areas including biomedicine, artificial intelligence, electronic information, new material, new energy and more.
More programs to lure top global talent
The convention also saw Guangzhou’s efforts to build itself into a global talent pool as a package of new programs and perks for overseas talents were unveiled. The newly-launched Kapok Plan will not only offer enterprises run by overseas talent a subsidy of up to a maximum of two million RMB, but also provide support for them in financing, intellectual protection, tax preference, and business start up.
In addition, the city will offer up to ten million RMB in housing subsidies to those at the highest level of qualification in their field including Nobel Laureates and academics.
A variety of recruitment activities held for overseas talents
A group of job fairs were held during the convention with 354 companies participating including Alibaba, Foxconn, HSBC, Siemens, Toshiba, Wal-Mart, AEON, HNA, China Unicom, China Southern Power Grid, Sony, Honeywell, JD.com, Sinopec Group and China Railway Group, bringing about 10,000 job positions.
One of the biggest highlights was online video recruitment. In addition to the main venue in Guangzhou, another two branch venues using video link were located in Singapore and Japan, attracting a total of over 100 top flight attendees.
The convention also continued to integrate online and offline resources by setting up an O2O job-hunting platform, through which, overseas talents can make an appointment for interview with their ideal employers. Statistics showed that the O2O platform has received around 10,000 job details posted by 335 enterprises and 33,000 cover letters.
Guangzhou aims to further develop IAB industries
Exhibitions and discussions focusing on IAB industries (IT/ICT, Artificial Intelligence, Biopharmaceutical) were also important components of the convention.
Embrace the “Made in China 2025” strategy, Guangzhou has released its plan to develop itself into a global IAB cluster and increase IAB industries’ output value to 1 trillion RMB by 2021.
As part of this year’s OCS, a group of returned scholars specializing in various fields were invited to give their advice on how to further develop the city’s IAB industries.
Official data showed that the combined output value of IAB industries in Guangzhou reached 472 billion RMB in 2016, representing on average a 16 percent annual growth rate from 2011.
Author: Abby Chen
Editor: Simon Haywood
