Southwest China's Guizhou province recently decided to provide financial support for high-end overseas returnees who are willing to start companies or innovation projects in the province. The move is meant to attract more talents to its development blueprint on big data, poverty relief and ecological protection.
Under the new measure, overseas returnees can be provided with 300,000 yuan ($43,825) for major projects, 200,000 yuan for excellent projects, and 100,000 for starting projects, except those who have received financial aid from the provincial finance department.
Projects should be in the interest of provincial development and have a promising future. Also, the construction period should be two years.
Applicants who are eligible for the innovation funds should be of Chinese nationality, have an overseas doctoral degree, and have signed a minimum three-year labor agreement as a full-time employee in the R&D field at a university, college, or research institute, or in the technological commercialization area of an enterprise. They should also have been working in Guizhou for no more than two years.
Those who want to apply for startup funds should be the legal representative of the enterprise, be of Chinese nationality, have an overseas master's degree, and have no criminal record. The enterprise registration time should be within one to three years, with a registration capital exceeding 500,000 yuan.
Applicants for the startup funds should have more than 50 percent of the registration capital, and the enterprise should have independent intellectual property rights or inventive patents.
Major project candidates should be involved in some national-level projects, including special national scientific and technological projects, scientific and technological projects belonging to the National Key R&D Plan, key National Natural Science Foundation (NNSF) projects, or major national technological transformation or innovation projects. An applicant can also be the chief manager of national scientific and technological plan projects, NNSF projects, or startup projects with total investment of over five million yuan.
An excellent project applicant should be the chief manager of scientific and technological projects at the provincial or ministerial level (except general projects belonging to provincial scientific and technological funds), technological transformation projects, or other technological innovation projects at the provincial level, or their startup projects should have received more than three million yuan in investments.
Those who plan to apply for startup project financial support should be the chief manager of some promising innovation projects at the municipal or departmental level or have startup projects with more than one million yuan in investments.
An applicant's place of work should check the application documents and make suggestions before submitting to the provincial human resources and social security department.
The final list will be released after expert assessment and comprehensive evaluation from the provincial human resources and social security department.
