Coastal city Lianyungang setting bench mark for talent recruitment

The 2023 Huaguo Mountain Talents Entrepreneurship and Innovation Week, a brand activity highlighting industrial development, innovation and entrepreneurship, opened in Lianyungang of East China's Jiangsu province on Wednesday.

With the theme of building a regional talent center and innovation highland under the Belt and Road Initiative, the event has gathered high-end professionals, promotes the integration of industry and talent and supports the city's modernization practices with the holding of an opening ceremony, 12 themed activities and major events at eight subvenues.

In recent years, Lianyungang has been ramping up efforts to construct a strong talent city and implemented a policy system centered on the Huaguo Mountain Talent Plan, involving leading talents, young talents, overseas talents and education and health talents. The city is committed to breaking new ground in scientific and technological innovation while strengthening, consolidating and extending its industrial chains and gaining new experiences for building modern civilization in China.

Relying on its pillar industries of petrochemicals, biomedicine and new materials, Lianyungang has introduced favorable policies in such areas as project financing, growth incentives, equity investment and talent recruitment. In 2022, the special talent funds at the city level increased to 140 million yuan ($19.18 million), doubling 2021's total.

Lianyungang's investment in talent funds in 2022 reached 250 million yuan, and by the end of the year the city accumulated 936,000 talent resources, with an average annual increase of 5 percent since the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20). The number of experts selected for the national major talent projects in Class A ranks among the top in northern Jiangsu.

Integration

Located in the middle of China's coastline in northeast Jiangsu, Lianyungang is the eastern starting point of the New Eurasian Land Bridge Economic Corridor and one of the country's first coastal cities opened to the outside world. It has won designation as a National Civilized City, National Health City, National Garden City and Innovative Pilot City and is a hub of sea-land conversion and multimodal transportation, boasting a three-dimensional transportation system comprised of ports, highways, railways, aviation and inland rivers. The city is building characteristic industrial clusters such as new pharmaceuticals, new materials, new energy, and high-end equipment manufacturing, with rapidly increasing talent demand.

Ma Shiguang, Party secretary of Lianyungang, said it has distinctive industrial characteristics, providing a broad stage for talent gathering and innovative development. "We will take the integration of industry and talent as an important focus and stimulate innovation and the industrial chains, allowing outstanding talents to shine in the modernization of the city," Ma said.

Shenghong Holding Group, a high-tech enterprise specializing in petrochemicals, textiles and energy, has launched a 16-million-metric-ton integrated refining and chemical project in Lianyungang. "Thanks to the city's talent policies, we have recruited more than 17,000 employees, and hundreds of people have been selected for provincial entrepreneurship and innovation talent training programs," said Gong Renpu, deputy director of Shenghong's human resources department.

The integration of industry and talent requires clarifying the stages of industrial development, and in 2022 the proportions of Lianyungang's three pillar industries were 10.6:45.3:44.1. At the same time, the key industries of new pharmaceuticals, new materials, new energy and high-end equipment manufacturing have nurtured a group of leading companies that require skilled talents, research and development personnel and management professionals.

This year, Lianyungang has introduced targeted measures on industries such as petrochemicals and proposed using industry talent maps and professional catalogs to enhance precision in attracting talents. The city has also entrusted the evaluation of talents to enterprises, including eligible executives and engineers in the city's Double Innovation Program.

Zhang Changying, a staff member at State Grid Lianyungang Power Supply, has jointly designed new technologies and equipment for power training work, obtaining more than 100 patents. "I graduated from a vocational school and earned a master's degree while working. Thanks to Lianyungang's good talent policies, I was selected for the Huaguo Mountain Talent Plan and enjoyed a series of preferential policies," Zhang said.

Currently, more than 80 percent of selected personnel in the top 10 industrial chains in Lianyungang are part of the city-level talent projects. In the first half of this year, Lianyungang's GDP increased by 12.9 percent year-on-year, ranking first among the 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta region.

Industrial highland

As a coastal industrial highland with great potential and accelerated rise, Lianyungang has national functional carriers such as China (Jiangsu) Pilot Free Trade Zone Lianyungang Area, Lianyungang Economic and Technological Development Area, Lianyungang High-Tech Development Zone, National Demonstration Area for the Cooperation among China's Eastern, Central and Western Regions, and nine provincial development zones. It has also built platforms such as a Cross-border E-commerce Comprehensive Pilot Zone and Comprehensive Bonded Area, providing favorable conditions and broad space for the development of port industries and modern logistics.

Lianyungang is continuously implementing its main strategy of "establishing the city through industry and revitalizing the city through port" while forming a modern industrial system led by petrochemical, steel, new pharmaceuticals, new materials, new energy and high-end equipment manufacturing.

By the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), Lianyungang will have China's largest raw material diversified olefin industry base; an influential polyester raw material production base; a leading high-end new material production base; an internationally competitive electronic chemical production base and an internationally competitive modern pharmaceutical innovation center.

Lianyungang's online retail sales exceeded 90 billion yuan in 2022, maintaining a growth rate of over 25 percent for the fifth straight year. Over the first half of 2023, there were nearly 730,000 market entities in the city; 1,355 industrial enterprises above designated size; and 13 listed companies.