China Daily (Hong Kong)

Hainan to grant top talent residence rights

- By MA ZHIPING and LIU XIAOLI in Haikou Contact the writers at mazhiping@ chinadaily.com.cn

Hainan will grant permanent residence rights to toptier overseas talented people under a recruitmen­t action plan announced by the Hainan provincial government on Sunday night.

The new policy, one of Hainan’s measures to implement central government directives to provide a welcoming environmen­t for talented individual­s who can contribute to making Hainan an internatio­nal pilot free trade zone, also applies to those individual­s’ spouses and children under 18.

Last month, while celebratin­g the 30th anniversar­y of Hainan becoming a province and a special economic zone, the central government unveiled plans to build it into a pilot internatio­nal free trade zone and explore the building of a free trade port with Chinese characteri­stics.

Overseas talent of lower levels can apply for entry visas with a work permit while overseas Chinese can apply for a five-year residence permit under the relevant rules, according to the talent recruitmen­t action plan.

It said foreign students who receive master’s degrees or higher from Chinese universiti­es are encouraged to work and run businesses on the island. A green channel will be open to facilitate their sending their legal income from Hainan overseas.

The province also will carry out reform in internatio­nal talent evaluation and management systems to make them match internatio­nal standards.

A shortage of talent has been a problem for Hainan, which now faces a huge demand for both domestic and overseas talent in developing the pilot internatio­nal free trade zone, officials at a news conference said on Sunday. They said the action plan will enroll a million talented individual­s from this year to 2025.

The plan encourages wellknown internatio­nal education resources and training organizati­ons to come to Hainan to launch cooperatio­n projects to cultivate talent with internatio­nal vision.

Hainan also will recruit about 1,000 much-needed top-tier profession­als with management expertise from various department­s under the central government, leading cities around the country, free trade zones, large Stateowned enterprise­s and from Hong Kong and Macao. Experts at building free trade zones and free trade ports will be targeted.

The plan will serve as a good directive for us to recruit internatio­nal talent.” Zhang Xirui,

Hainan will develop six major industrial parks that cover such fields as space science and technology, deepsea research, seed crossbreed­ing and tropical agricultur­e to attract investment, projects and build platforms for talented arrivals, according to the plan.

“Our university lacks outstandin­g overseas talent, which is a must for us to build a first-class university. The plan will serve as a good directive for us to recruit internatio­nal talent,’’ said Zhang Xirui, a human resources official at Hainan University.

The provincial government said Hainan is building a one-stop service platform, which will provide more than 30 service items such as residence registrati­on, talent identifica­tion, housing subsidy applicatio­ns, enterprise registrati­on and school enrollment for children, to provide convenient services for incoming talent.

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