Chongqing – The 2025 Chongqing International Talent Exchange Conference opened on November 15, bringing collectively specialists and innovators from round the world, together with Portugal, Serbia, Australia and the UK. As a platform for international expertise trade, the occasion focuses on deepening cooperation in science, know-how, and innovation amid rising international demand for top-tier expertise.
Under the theme “Pooling Talent in New Chongqing, Joining Efforts for a New Future,” this 12 months’s occasion spotlights three key areas—conferences, featured actions, and expertise recruitment. It goals to attract professionals, spur new innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives, and create a variety of cooperation and matchmaking alternatives.
The 2025 Chongqing International Talent Exchange Conference opened in Southwest China’s Chongqing on November 15. (Photo/Chen Zhan)
“Gathering minds isn’t enough—collaboration wins”
Throughout the opening day, audio system outlined new pathways for analysis collaboration, know-how switch, and the constructing of innovation ecosystems succesful of supporting sustained growth. Many company additionally described their sturdy impressions of Chongqing’s fast progress in current years, citing its rising enchantment to high-tech firms and analysis organizations.
Rodrigo Martins, President of the European Academy of Sciences and a professor at NOVA University Lisbon, mentioned Chongqing stands out to him as a metropolis that brings collectively scientific functionality, openness, and wealthy cultural character.
Martins famous that Chongqing has made scientific and technological innovation and expertise cultivation a core technique for growth, investing closely in insurance policies and assets to draw researchers and assist high-level innovation. “Chongqing has continued to inject talent elements and scientific and technological resources to bring continuous power and vitality to urban development, with remarkable results,” he mentioned.
Looking forward, Martins mentioned the European Academy of Sciences will arrange its China Center at the Western (Chongqing) Science City, creating a brand new platform to advance China-Europe cooperation. The middle will give attention to areas such as clear and versatile electronics, biosensing, clever terminals, and new supplies, serving to drive high-quality industrial growth and pace up the utility of scientific breakthroughs.
In an interview with Bridging News, he famous that China—and Chongqing in specific—is making vital strides in attracting the expertise wanted for main transformations. He emphasised {that a} sturdy innovation ecosystem is determined by bringing collectively succesful groups slightly than counting on particular person specialists.
“Aggregating people is the beginning; being able to discuss with them is progress. But if we want to create prosperity, we need to work together. That is the real success,” Martins mentioned. According to him, nurturing complementary analysis groups that share widespread targets is crucial to turning innovation into real-world affect.
Wajid Hussain, a analysis assistant at the Beijing Institute of Technology, mentioned he has attended many conferences worldwide, however this one stood out as “one of the best.” He highlighted how the occasion introduced collectively main groups targeted not solely on innovation, but additionally on important fields such as power and different applied sciences the world is determined by.
“These are the real needs of our time,” he mentioned, emphasizing that significant international change in the end depends on individuals. “To make all these transformations, we need talent.”
From AI skills to real-world cooperation: key matters in focus
The opening ceremony additionally featured keynote speeches from leaders in frontier know-how. Among them was Wang Xingxing, Founder, CEO and CTO of Unitree Robotics Co., Ltd., who spoke about constructing an innovation ecosystem for younger scientific and technological expertise. His firm’s humanoid robotic gained broad consideration for its on-site demonstration at the convention.
Wang mentioned Unitree’s journey displays broader shifts in the trade. “When the company was established in 2016, AI and robotics received very little attention. This industry has gradually gone from being unpopular to popular. The core reason Unitree has reached where it is today is outstanding talent,” he mentioned. He emphasised that cultivating younger expertise is determined by constructing an ecosystem that gives alternatives and assist.
“The biggest problem becomes how to better discover young people with potential and give them more staged support and opportunities,” he mentioned, pointing to analysis funding for college college students, tech entrepreneurship competitions and start-up funds as important instruments for nurturing new expertise.
Wang additionally described how future innovation may increase the prospects of distant collaboration. “For example, if there is a robot in Chongqing and I am in Hangzhou, I can remotely control my robot to participate in activities. By next year, my robot may stand on the stage instead of me, giving speeches or demonstrations,” he mentioned.
Guests interacted with Unitree robotics at the 2025 Chongqing International Talent Exchange Conference. (Photo/Chen Zhan)
Another keynote speaker, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Senior Professor at the University of Oxford and Honorary Professor at Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, addressed the theme of “AI + Talent.”
He shared knowledge exhibiting China’s rising position in the AI area. As of August this 12 months, the mixed energetic customers of Baidu, ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba accounted for about 46 p.c of the world’s energetic AI customers. Among the high ten AI firms with energetic customers in the world, six are from China. Mayer-Schönberger famous that whereas China leads in consumer scale, the United States at the moment maintains a bonus in annual recurring income for AI start-ups, suggesting totally different strengths in the international competitors for AI growth.
Marija Gnjatović, State Secretary at Serbia’s Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation, highlighted the significance of commercializing scientific and technological advances. She famous that China is one of Serbia’s key analysis companions, pointing to joint initiatives, youth expertise trade applications, and cooperation with establishments such as the Chongqing Academy of Sciences.
“We can start with specific cooperation projects, such as transferring technology from Chongqing to Serbia in agriculture, satellite remote sensing, and quantum fields,” she mentioned.
As cooperation between China and Serbia deepens, Ivan Pavlovic of Science and Technology Park Nis mentioned there’s sturdy potential for additional educational and scientific trade. “We are very happy to exchange knowledge between our professors and students, especially given China’s tremendous growth over the past ten years,” he mentioned.
He highlighted China’s progress in robotics, the automotive trade and new power automobiles as areas of specific curiosity. Pavlovic mentioned future cooperation may increase into life sciences, biomedicine and synthetic intelligence. “We also expect broader exchanges—not only talent mobility, but also the transfer of technology and knowledge in aerospace and new energy vehicles,” he mentioned.
Chongqing invests 300M yuan in future tech initiatives
The opening ceremony additionally kicked off Chongqing’s open competitors for main analysis initiatives, a flagship initiative geared toward advancing breakthroughs in strategically vital applied sciences. The chosen initiatives are carefully aligned with the metropolis’s “416” science and know-how innovation framework and its “33618” trendy manufacturing cluster system.
This spans a broad vary of cutting-edge fields, from built-in circuits, AI, sensible automobiles, and robotics to precision medication, progressive medication, mind–laptop interfaces, superior supplies, inexperienced manufacturing, new power, and power storage. A complete of 48 initiatives have been unveiled, backed by greater than 300 million yuan (about 42.3 million U.S. {dollars}). Among them, 26 key initiatives will every obtain over 5 million yuan, with the largest single award reaching 40 million yuan.
Applications are open to universities, analysis institutes, enterprises and innovation consortia with sturdy analysis capability and impartial legal-person standing in China or overseas. Applicants should display sturdy analysis efficiency and worldwide affect, as properly as impartial mental property rights related to their proposals.
Project leaders should be full-time workers of the lead establishment, and groups are inspired to work throughout total industrial chains and with companions in trade, academia, and analysis to handle key technological challenges. Interested organizations can apply by way of the official web sites of the Chongqing Municipal Science and Technology Bureau and the Chongqing Municipal Economic and Information Technology Commission.
In addition to the principal discussion board, six industrial expertise growth conferences have been held, specializing in Chongqing’s best industries, together with new-generation digital data manufacturing, clever and related new-energy automobiles, synthetic intelligence, life sciences, new supplies and inexperienced low-carbon applied sciences.
The convention additionally unveiled and honored greater than a dozen expertise growth platforms, together with the Western China Center of the International Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance and the Western Talent Development Strategy Research Intelligence Alliance. Several cooperation agreements have been signed, and new lists of expertise alternatives and innovation outcomes have been launched, giving sturdy momentum to Chongqing’s efforts to construct a globally influential hub for expertise and innovation.