The 2019 Chongqing Talents Conference kicked off a two-day event on November 9th, in a concerted effort to increase the city’s talent pool to fuel high-quality development. The conference hosted by Chongqing Municipal CPC Committee and the Chongqing Municipal People’s Government was held at the Yuelai International Convention Center featuring more than 30 events and attracting more than 6,000 high-end professionals from around China and abroad.

The annual event served to attract talent from China and abroad to foster international cooperation to exchange ideas, talent matchmaking for future projects in efforts to power Chongqing’s future development.

One of the main areas of focus during the conference was how to develop further cooperation between national and international universities enabling an environment to attract foreign talent to the city.

In-depth discussions on building first-tier universities, and cooperation between nations took place and were often cited as “the keys for Chongqing to realize high-quality development.”

Events such as “Academics in Chongqing symposium,” “Academic seminar on biomedical sciences,” “Ceremony of a thousand learned scholars in Chongqing,” “Symposium of academics.”

“The fourth college high school education development summit,” “Autumn forum for outstanding young scholars at home and abroad,” and “The 6th Han Hong forum for young scholars,” were all geared to various levels of international cooperation between universities.

Ho Teck Hua, Senior Deputy President and the Provost National University of Singapore, said that “It’s an extremely big conference... a platform to attract many talents. One clear thing is that the city government of Chongqing is fully behind attracting talents to the area. A great city needs at least one great university” “Chongqing is going to become a great city, so, therefore, it must develop a great university as well.” One way to increase the prestige of universities is through fostering international partnerships, which he said will help to cultivate a talent ecosystem in Chongqing. NUS has been working with the Chongqing government and are going to set up a research institute based in Chongqing to start at the beginning of next year, “we are very excited, and I believe we are going to do a lot of great research in Chongqing.” The institute will also serve to train talent through Master and Ph. D. programs.

Kevin Hall, senior deputy vice-chancellor and vice president of the University of Newcastle in Australia, reflected on his first visit to Chongqing and the event. “The event is fantastic. “There are a lot of people interested in higher education, product development, innovation, all the kinds of things that we at universities really think are important to a country, to a province and a city.” He said the conference had been a great venue to share experiences, listening to others, and learn about the work they are doing in China with Chinese partners. “We have a longstanding agreement with SISU (Sichuan International Studies University)  we have 120 students in a joint program every year, we run on what’s called a 3 + 1 model, so the students from this city get to come to Newcastle for 1 year of their degree,” he said, citing the conference as important to future expansion of the program beyond the business school to other programs. “Chongqing is doing great with outreach and connecting with global communities, it’s great to see at this meeting to see people from 50 or 60 countries that are here,” he said, cooperation which will be essential to “solving some of the big problems of this world around sustainability and inclusivity.”

Sergei Bachevskii, Rector of St. Petersburg State University of Telecommunications, Russia, said that his school has been partnering with the University of Telecommunications and have been exchanging students since 2015. “Once we get back to St. Petersburg we will continue cooperating with our partner university,” he said, “The roundtable will also give us more ideas about ways to accelerate talents, how we can support them, we look forward to sharing our experiences and to attend all of the events of the conference.”

 Iain Watt, Deputy Chancellor, and Vice President of the University of Technology Sydney said, “I didn't expect (the conference) to be quite as huge as it is, it has been really interesting listening to all the very high-level speakers,” he said. “The single message I take out from this morning is the level of importance that the local government here places on the development of talent. They are very explicitly putting it right at the top of their agenda, and I think that is a wonderful policy.”  One area that Watts said might help to increase the prestige of universities in Chongqing and China is developing a university’s culture. “I think one thing that is quite important is universities here in Chongqing need to build a distinctive identity, quite often it is hard to tell one Chinese university from another they tend to be modeled very similarly to one another. if these universities can build a distinctive identity of their own, they’ll find it much easier to attract other universities to collaborate with them.” When he returns home, he plans on sharing his experience at the conference and highlights the level of importance placed on talent here in Chongqing. “Well, the first thing that I would like to do is go back and tell the Australian government that they should be investing and prioritizing the development of talents in the same way that the government here is doing. I think it is a very far-seeing policy that will pay off in the long term, not just for Chongqing but the whole of Southwestern China.