The talents include Nobel laureates, winners of State Preeminent Science and Technology Progress Award, academicians of the Academy of Sciences and Engineering from China, the United States, Germany, the UK, France, Japan, Canada, etc, presidents of world-renowned universities (now or then); Turing Award winners; Fields Medal winners; experts who have won the “Friendship Award” from the Chinese government; CEOs, CTOs, or technical R&D directors at headquarters of Fortune Global 500.
In addition, artistic and sports talents, such as the chief conductor, artistic director and chief performer of world-famous orchestras, head coaches who directly cultivated Olympic champions in the past 5 years, are also on the lists.
Dongguan divides high-end talents into four categories. The housing subsidy for first, second, third and fourth categories of talents raised to 6 million yuan, 4 million yuan, 2 million yuan and 1 million yuan respectively, from 2 million yuan, 1.5 million yuan, 1 million yuan and 300,000 yuan before.
However, the average price of second-hand houses in Dongguan reached 26,389 yuan per square meter, and in the Songshan Lake area, where scientific and technological talents gathered, the average price exceeded 45,000 yuan per square meter.
Dongguan also provides considerable rental subsidies. According to application regulations, special-grade talents can get up to 6,000 yuan rental subsidy per month, and a maximum of 5,000 yuan, 4,000 yuan, 3,000 yuan and 2,000 yuan per month will be provided for those four categories of high-end talents respectively.
Dongguan is located between Guangzhou and Shenzhen (two economic engines of Guangdong Province), 59 kilometers northwest of the downtown of Guangzhou, 99 kilometers southeast of Shenzhen, and 140 kilometers away from Hong Kong.
According to statistics, Dongguan’s GDP in 2022 was 1120.032 billion yuan, an increase of only 0.6% over the previous year. The economic growth rate ranked last in Guangdong.
“Dongguan has always been renowned as the ‘world’s factor’, with a large proportion of manufacturing, which began with processing and assembling business of foreign orders, but its intellectual property rights were relatively insufficient and it highly depended on foreign companies,” said Ding Li, an economics researcher at the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences.
After the erosion of its advantages in low-cost labor, land, energy, Dongguan's manufacturing sector is facing a substantial challenge in terms of transformation and upgrade."
To cultivate talents independently is a key step to counter this.
Although Dongguan is a city with its GDP over a trillion yuan, there are just two public universities, Guangdong Medical University and Dongguan University of Technology, and only the latter offers proper talents for Dongguan’s industries.
University of the Greater Bay Area, a high-level science and engineering-based research university, covering around 2,356 acres, has been planned to be located in Dongguan.
Self-built universities will enhance the local talents tank, and have a profound impact on the local economic and social development in the long run.
In recent years, many cities in Guangdong have cooperated with universities in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), for example, opened in September 2022, with the first intake of 600 postgraduate students.
Translated by intern Dong Xinyi
