Pudong more attractive for overseas innovators, entrepreneurs

The 2020 Shanghai Free Trade Zone Cloud+ Talent Innovation Conference opened in Pudong, Shanghai on Aug 24, aiming to attract more overseas talent to innovate and start businesses in the area.

A total of 662 projects from 29 countries signed up for the conference, 60 of which were selected to attend a project roadshow. Representatives of the outstanding projects will be invited to learn more about developing projects in the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone in Pudong.

The projects focus on Pudong's six key industries, namely chips, drugs, aerospace, vehicles, smart manufacturing and big data, as well as the new online economy sector. They are expected to boost local industrial development.

During the conference, the special high-end purification materials R&D and industrialization project from the United Kingdom, the DNA replication regulating cancer cell and virus proliferation blocking project from the United States and the DOSFA automated machine learning workstation project from Austria signed letters of intention.

Wang Guodong, co-founder of the Austrian project, said he has found a location for an office in Zhangjiang, a high-tech industrial park in Pudong, thanks to the help of the offshore base in the free trade zone.

Wang's project empowers the manufacturing industry through deep learning. The results of the overseas test phase have shown that it can increase the yield rate of chip manufacturing by 3-5 percent.

"Zhangjiang is the best area for semiconductors in the country, and 80 percent of our team is made up of international talent. The industrial environment and the convenience for foreign talent in the free trade zone have prompted us to choose Pudong as our first stop for entrepreneurship," said Wang.

Other projects, such as the X-DOC computer platform project based on neural networks from Ukraine and the handheld spectrometer and data platform project from the United States, also expressed interest in developing in the free trade zone.

This year, the conference will last for five days and will include special activities such as overseas project acceleration camps, large enterprise demand docking, and policy training.

Unlike in previous years, this year's conference is equipped with a cloud platform which allows participants to take a virtual tour of scientific facilities in Shanghai, such as the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility, protein center and various partner institutions of the offshore base, to gain an in-depth understanding of the entrepreneurial environment and consider a development path.

The Shanghai Association for Science and Technology and the Pudong government jointly unveiled an offshore entrepreneurship base for overseas professionals in the free trade zone in 2015. The annual conference is part of their efforts to promote the offshore base.

Since 2016, the annual conference has attracted nearly 2,300 projects from more than 30 countries and regions, and overseas innovators and entrepreneurs are increasingly using the base as a way to operate their projects in China.

The offshore base has more than 50 partner institutions and has organized over 400 talent attraction activities, including the conference.

"Last year's conference used simultaneous interpretation in more than 10 languages. This showed that the base is gaining in global influence," said Tang Shiqing, director of the Pudong Science and Economic Commission.

"Pudong will allow the domestic and foreign markets to benefit from each other, improve international services, make full use of domestic and overseas capital markets, and promote cooperation between scientists and entrepreneurs, so as to attract global innovation resources," Tang said.

During the conference, the offshore base announced two new partners: Zhangjiang Incubator and Creative Lab.

Li Wenting, general manager of Creative Lab, said he has established a 140,000-square-meter industrial park in the Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone, which includes 8,000 square meters of laboratories and production plants.

In the eight months since the establishment of the industrial park, 60 overseas projects have been introduced. "Since this year, enthusiasm among overseas projects about entering China has not changed. Through cooperation with the offshore base, the facilitation measures of the free trade zone will help accelerate their journey to China."