Guiyang: Peacocks Fly Southwest to This New Highland to Build Dreams

“Guiyang is a city with good inclusiveness and high tolerance for trial and error, as well as a city where people have strong sense of belonging. No matter what difficulties we encountered, the local government would spare no effort to help us out.” William Li, Executive Chariman of Esgyn Corporation Corporation, had a lot to say about when she came to Guiyang four years ago.

Why Guiyang? William Li’s answer is: good policies and excellent ecological environment. Guiyang pioneered in the field of big data with clear development direction and a series of effective measures. Realizing the good prospects of big data industry in Guiyang, William Li decided to register the company headquarter here so as to work on big data relying on a strong talent team and rich experience in database development.

William Li is merely one of the many makers in Guiyang. According to statistics, Guiyang has established a multi-channel and multi-model big data talents importing and training system through various measures such as project introduction, university training, enterprise introduction and social training. The number of big data talents in Guiyang reached 175,000.

Nowadays, an increasing number of big data talents are swarming into Guiyang, just like “peacocks flying southwest”. Guiyang is drawing attention at home and abroad with its strong development momentum, and is becoming a new highland for thousands of talents to “build their dreams”.

“It is too costly for any enterprise to start from scratch. After many visits to Guiyang, we made up our minds to take root here.” In 2017, Huang Yong, chairman of Guizhou Tuzhi Information Technology Co., Ltd., gave up his work in Beijing and came with several partners from Shenzhen, Yunnan and other places to work here as a group of “Guiyang drifters”. At the beginning, the company had less than five people, and now there are more than 30.

“What attracts me most is the policies here and the potential and momentum of big data development.” Huang Yong told the reporter that when he registered the company, he was amazed by “the speed of Guizhou”: the registration of all the licenses took just one day. “Starting a business here, we don’t have to worry about the policies or concessions—the government keeps its word.” Also, when he prepared the office space, the preferential policies on rent, taxation, etc. showed him the friendliness of the city. 

“We are actually no more ‘Guiyang drifters’ because all have settled here. Many key employees in my company have moved to Guiyang with their wives and children.” Huang Yong said in recent years, with the operation of China Railway High-Speed and subway, good ecological environment, and the booming of the big data industry, most key staff of the company have decided to stay here. More and more “Guiyang drifters” have become “Guiyangers”.

Talents play a vital role in the development of the big data. In order to attract talents from all over China, the Guiyang government has issued more than 30 special policy documents, such as “Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of Talent Team in Big Data Industry”, “Guidelines for the Evaluation of Professional Skills of Talents in Big Data Industry in Guiyang (Trial)”, “‘Ten, Hundred, Thousand and Ten Thousand’ Big Data Talents Development Plan Implementation Measures in Guiyang”, and “Ten Measures for Innovating Talents Agglomeration Mechanism to Promote Big Data, Great Industry and Major Investment Attraction”. In these documents, specific preferential measures were proposed like talent introduction, talent training, entrepreneurial incentives, professional titles assessment and treatment guarantee.

In addition to the top-level design, Guiyang also put emphasis on its talent recruitment. “We enrolled talents by means of building platforms, recruiting in other provinces, and attracting talents in activities and projects, all of which formed a multiple recruiting system. Based on the platforms of Big Data Expo and Guizhou Talent Expo, we have gathered a chunk of big data professionals and entrepreneurial teams.” According to Liu Hu, head of the Big Data Personnel Department of the Guiyang Big Data Development Administration, with the help of the multiple talent introduction system, Guiyang introduced and cultivated more than 1,500 high-level talents in 2018. Among them, 24 are academicians of the two academies (Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering), Changjiang Scholars, or heads of National Science and Technology Awards; Guiyang City has selected 10 leading talents in the big data industry, 120 innovative big data talents, and more than 1,000 big data talents working in government agencies and institutions.

Under construction as the core area of the National Big Data (Guizhou) Comprehensive Pilot Zone, Guiyang City made full use of the favorable conditions and took multiple measures, such as industrial and project introduction, university training, enterprise introduction, social training, and serving temporary positions, to develop a multi-channel and multi-model big data talent introduction and training system. Therefore, the number of big data talents in Guiyang reached 175,000, and a team of big data talents with clear hierarchy, reasonable structure and strong guarantee has been preliminarily formed.

Because of the “magnetic field effect” of the policies, the talents gathered here and added innovative vitality to Guiyang. According to public reports, on the list of Chinese graduate placement by Alibaba in 2016, Guizhou ranked seventh; the National Urban Youth Index annually released by Tencent suggest that Guiyang ranked seventh in 2016, second in 2017, and first in 2018.