Shanghai seeks to lure overseas talents

Shanghai is seeking overseas talents by offering them high-salary jobs, key innovation projects and convenient customs measures, according to a summit held on Sept 29.

A catalogue containing 14,000 Shanghai-based jobs from around 3,000 companies was published at the opening ceremony of the Global Talent Innovation and Entrepreneurship Summit which was livestreamed to hundreds of representatives of overseas students across the world.

More than 200 positions in the catalogue offer an annual salary of above 1 million yuan ($154,600), and nearly 1,000 positions come with a 600,000-yuan annual salary package.

These job positions, covering fields such as finance, manufacturing and aviation, were posted on the website of Gathering Global Talents in Shanghai (www.sotsw.cn).

The website also shared the job database with the overseas student service departments in Chinese embassies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, Canada, Australia, Japan and Singapore.

Another list of 2,000 key innovation projects from 600 companies which require talents skilled in biomedicine, new materials and artificial intelligence was also announced at the ceremony.

Shanghai Customs also unveiled a series of new measures, including expedited customs clearance for research equipment and personal belongings, aimed at helping overseas students and high-end talents settle down in Shanghai.

Hu Wenrong, director of the organization department of the Communist Party of China Shanghai Commission, said, "Stepping into the new era, Shanghai is in need of global professionals more than ever before. We have been doing our best to create an environment that attracts and retains overseas talents in the city."

Justin O'Jack, chief representative of the University of Virginia in China, said more and more Chinese students are coming back to China to work after they graduate from universities in the US.

"The opportunity to grow is so much more in Shanghai," he said, adding that many US universities have leveraged their alumni networks to help international students land jobs in Shanghai.