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Shenzhen opens HR office in Brussels

Updated: 2011-09-24 08:40

By Fu Jing (China Daily)

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BRUSSELS - China's fast-growing city of Shenzhen opened a human resource liaison office in Brussels on Friday to attract talented European and overseas Chinese job-seekers.

The government said it will offer a package of benefits, including affordable housing, a bonus and social welfare, for talented individuals in finance, culture, life sciences, logistics, new energy, new materials and other high-tech areas.

The Brussels branch is Shenzhen's fourth global talent liaison office, with the others in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Sydney.

The offices are a part of the Shenzhen's Peacock Plan, which is similar to the central government's massive global headhunting campaign following the international economic and financial turmoil in 2008.

"High-caliber and leading foreign experts and overseas Chinese students working on their PhDs or master studies are our prime targets," Shenzhen's Vice-Mayor Tang Jie told China Daily. "We offer a great package of incentives to ensure them a decent job."

Tang said his city aims to surpass Hong Kong in five years in terms of economic output and hopes to transform from a manufacturing and assembling center into a global innovation hub.

"To achieve the goal, what we need to do first is to change the city into an influential hub of talent in the Asia-Pacific region," Tang said.

In line with the Peacock Plan, the city plans to attract more than 50 pioneering teams with global influences and 1,000 renowned overseas individuals to work in Shenzhen between 2011 and 2015, said Li Ming, deputy director of the Shenzhen Human Resources Bureau.

The pool of top-level talent will help attract more than 10,000 qualified personnel in the next five years, Li said.

Aside from setting up liaison offices overseas, Shenzhen has been holding China's biggest job fairs for 10 years. The upcoming fair will be held on Nov 4 and 5 and is expected to attract thousands of people, including international training organizations, executive-headhunting companies and human resources services institutions.

"Shenzhen is experiencing a new round of transformation after more than three decades of fast development," Tang said.

"For the latest step, we are focusing on the quality of development."

He admitted that while clear blue skies are rare in Shenzhen, the city hopes to learn from European experiences in urbanization and industrialization.

Three decades ago, Shenzhen was only a small fishing town with "only one street, one traffic light, one traffic police officer, one park and one animal in the park", Tang said.

"At that time we only had two college graduates in the town," he said, compared with 70,000 foreign experts and 1.4 million college graduates today.

"Building from this, we need to aim higher to become a hub of global talent and provide a wonderful legacy for future generations," said Tang.

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