In Weifang, Shandong, top talent drives industry

Weifang, Shandong province, kicked off its 2026 talent innovation and development event on Monday, bringing together academicians and experts from universities and research institutes. The event also served as a matchmaking platform.

Before the event, participants took in an exhibition about Weifang's achievements in talent-led innovation and development. The exhibition highlighted the city's years of integrating industry and talent and gave the visiting experts the feel of Weifang's innovation pulse.

The city extended an invitation to talent from home and abroad. Its Party secretary, Liu Yun, said it is vigorously implementing a talent strategy, advancing the integrated development of education, science, technology and talent.

The experts and scholars also visited enterprises in Weifang for on-site research, exchanging views on technological needs and aligning their cooperation plans.

With such coordinated efforts, the city's promotion of talent has reached new levels. Its count now exceeds 2.6 million.

Backed by a strong industrial foundation, Weifang has built high-level platforms to fully support incoming talent and give full play to their abilities.

Peking University's Institute of Advanced Agricultural Sciences in Weifang has developed BreedingGPT, the world's first large model for crop breeding, and established a third-generation hybrid wheat breeding system with independent intellectual property rights.

The institute is the university's first high-end agricultural research institute outside Beijing. Its underlying reason for choosing Weifang was the city's strong agricultural industrial foundation. Last year, Weifang's total output value in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fisheries reached 141 billion yuan ($21 billion).

Its high-end manufacturing tells a similar story. The city is known for its manufacturing, having 37 of China's 41 major industrial categories. It has particular strengths in power equipment, high-end chemicals and new-generation information technology.

Weifang's talent acquisition efforts have followed a unique innovation path suited to local conditions. Vocational colleges in the city offer more than 800 specialty programs, covering 19 major categories that correspond to the city's industrial system. This not only supplies enterprises with large numbers of high-quality professionals but also offers young talent broad space for career development.

During the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30), Weifang aims to push its GDP past the 1 trillion yuan mark. To achieve this breakthrough, it needs strong support from high-end talent and efficient empowerment from scientific and technological innovation.

At the event, Weifang set out its goals of attracting and cultivating more than 100 national- and provincial-level leading talents each year, and to push its total talent resource above 3 million by 2030.