Taizhou offers incentives to attract talent

Taizhou in Zhejiang Province, a city on its way to becoming a global manufacturing hub, is hungry for talent. Hence it has unveiled a raft of incentives and policies to entice new blood.

Among 30 newly released measures, top talent can enjoy a tailor-made development plan as well as targeted assistance in housing, health care and children’s education. Their team can be granted a funds up to 100 million (US$14.4 million) by the city government.

The government will also offer free rent for three years and allocate 10 percent of essential starting funds to startups. For growing firms, it will launch multi-round equity investments totaling 150 million yuan.

One of the 27 central cities in the Yangtze River Delta region, Taizhou has chosen to release the measures in Shanghai, which takes a pivotal role in propelling regional development.

Shanghai is rich in innovation resources, while Taizhou is a traditional manufacturing base. At present, Taizhou has 68,000 manufacturing companies, 68 state-level manufacturing bases and 21 industry clusters on a scale reaching tens of billions of yuan. Major industries include automobiles, medicine and aerospace.

The two cities are natural partners with complementary advantages.

One example is Taizhou-based CE Pharm, jointly set up by listed company Lianhetech and Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Two years ago, it set up an innovation center in the Pudong New Area. 

According to the Taizhou government, it has been put on the government agenda to assist the company to list on the sci-tech innovation board in three to five years.

Zhu Tianming is the kind of talent attractive to Taizhou.

A Shanghainese and Fudan University graduate, Zhu chose to work in Taizhou 10 years ago as a senior executive of the Zhejiang Hisun Pharmaceutical Co.

“Ten years ago, Taizhou’s pharmaceutical industry developed well. Today, it still has a good combination of policy incentives and industrial development, though Shanghai’s Zhangjiang is many people’s first choice,” Zhu said.

He added: “To attract talent, Taizhou has worked hard to address their headaches such as housing, health care and education. It’s very important.”

Zhu is planning to open his own startup in Taizhou’s Huangyan District.