Hunan province is famous as the birthplace to a multitude of talents. As the province enters a new era of sci-tech opening up and cooperation, it looks ahead to attracting, cultivating and utilizing talent, recognizing this as the prime resource for high-quality development.
Rewarding talent
In November 2019, Micro-nano Processing Laboratory was officially launched in the Hunan Institute of Advanced Sensing and Information Technology, Xiangtan University. On the day of the launch ceremony, Peng Lianmao, the dean of the institute, was very happy because it was a step closer to realizing his goal of building a first-class sensing technology base, both at home and abroad.
In recent years, Hunan has focused on key industrial fields, with an eye on frontier fields in the future, paying close attention to talented personnel and teams at home and abroad that master international leading technologies and take the lead in industrial development. Now, Hunan is accelerating to form a grape cluster effect, namely introducing a talent, building a team, cultivating a project and driving an industry.
At the same time, Hunan focuses on implementing the training plan for those with sci-tech talents and form a high-level sci-tech pool featuring the interconnections between the industry groups of existing advantageous disciplines and the sci-tech of next generations. Since the implementation of the plan, 222 sci-tech savvy people have been supported, winning more than 50 national sci-tech awards. Fifty-five young talented people were selected for the national talent program successively, and more than 40 people were celebrated as national excellent and distinguished scholars.
Feeling at home
In 2020, an English animated video titled Knowledge for COVID-19 Prevention, produced by the Department of Science and Technology of Hunan Province, went viral across the country. The video provided foreign talent in China with effective guidance for self-protection.
The local government has been always committed to helping foreign talent better understand Hunan, integrate into Hunan, and work in Hunan. A variety of measures have been taken to allow these people to enjoy a sense of being at home, including opening a special service window for expats to apply for work and residence permits, introducing all-purpose-card services, holding volunteering activities, and offering a service to create innovations and start businesses.
In September 2020, the construction of the Hunan Free Trade Area was officially approved, which widened the channels for foreign talents to Hunan.
Hunan has actively innovated the service concept and expanded the service modes. Meanwhile, a Xiaoxiang Foreign Experts Volunteering Team was set up. Various volunteer services, such as the chronic disease detection and consultations in the grassroots units, free oral English class, cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries, have been organized to help foreign experts better understand China and integrate into the country.
More than 300 foreign experts and students have attended volunteering activities since these were first held in November 2020.
Global cooperation
In 1980, the first international training course on hybrid rice was held in Changsha, with the trainees coming from more than 10 major rice-producing countries in Asia.
Relying on the hybrid rice research team, represented by Yuan Longping, the late academician, Hunan province maximized the strong technological advantages in the field of hybrid rice. There are many training courses provided for the developing countries, especially the African countries every year, solving the problems encountered in different countries in popularizing the technology of hybrid rice, and cultivating the relevant technical staff.
In 2009, the first technical aid training base of hybrid rice was established by the Yuan Longping High-Tech Agriculture Corporation. By the end of 2020, the corporation had finished 22 technical cooperation projects of all types, completed 177 intergovernmental human resource development projects, and trained nearly 10,000 people, benefiting more than 100 countries along the Belt and Road Initiative.
Today, represented by the international training course on hybrid rice technology, more and more sci-tech forces from Hunan are going global, offering Hunan solutions to solving the worldwide problems.
Hunan is a place full of tolerance and never stops the pursuit of excellence. The province welcomes those with talent from home and abroad to innovate, start businesses and help develop Hunan, while developing themselves.