Shanghai dangles hukou carrot to lure postgraduates to five new cities

Non-native postgraduates who graduated from universities in Shanghai this year can directly apply for local hukou, or permanent residence, if they work in the city's five new cities and free trade zone and meet some basic conditions, the Shanghai Student Affairs Center has announced.

The pilot program has been introduced to support the five new cities in Jiading, Qingpu, Songjiang and Fengxian districts as well as Nanhui of the Pudong New Area to attract high-quality talent, according to the center.

Currently, the population size of the five new cities is between 300,000 and 750,000, and their vision is to increase the number to around 1 million.

Applicants need to sign employment agreements for a period of one year or longer. The employers should be Party or government offices, public institutions, social organizations, foundations, social service organizations, or enterprises with a registered capital of at least 1 million yuan (US$156,900) in the five new towns.

Applications should be submitted to the center in December.

About 207,000 students graduated from local universities this year, up 14,000 from last year. Among them, about 30 percent were postgraduates.

Hukou is important for Chinese to enjoy social welfare benefits in a city where their permanent residence is registered, such as children's education, health care and qualification to buy property.

For most non-native students who wish to settle down in the city, the regular way to get the qualification to apply for local hukou is to accumulate 72 credit points, which are given based on factors such as their education background and the industries they work in.

Usually, eligible graduates need to submit their applications in June but considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on job-seeking, the city is giving graduates more time to look for jobs and has opened the application channel in December, too.

In recent years, Shanghai has introduced favorable policies for university graduates to attract top-notch talent to support the city's high-quality development.

In 2018, it launched a pilot program to allow undergraduates of Peking and Tsinghua universities to get hukou as long as they work in the city upon graduation. Last year, it expanded the policy to four local universities that are seeking to become world-class universities – Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Fudan University, Tongji University and East China Normal University.

Also last year, the city began to allow postgraduates from top universities, which are seeking to develop themselves or certain disciplines into world-class level, to apply for hukou directly upon graduation if they meet some basic requirements.

With the latest pilot program, postgraduates from all local universities will be able to apply for local hukou if they work in the city's five new cities and free trade zone.