Income growth for the residents of Xuzhou city topped the provincial list last year, thanks to the promotion of the entrepreneurship and innovation campaign which has encouraged more people to start up their businesses.
Luo Shuai, who graduated from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, led his entrepreneurial team to conquer the 2-micron semiconductor chip technology in 2014, breaking the long-term monopoly of the technology by foreign companies and giving a strong boost to the development of the industrial sector and the telecommunications sector.
Luo has attributed his success to the provision of 100 million yuan of industrial fund, free rental workshop, one-on-one entrepreneurial services, which has lured him from Beijing to Xuzhou. A factory with 30 mu of government land is springing up.
According to Luo, government authorities in Xuzhou have released a series of supportive policies ranging from entrepreneurship training management and loan guarantee discount to housing subsidies in a bid to encourage college graduates to launch their business startups.
The local authorities have also set up a special fund by allocating 40 million yuan each year for the subsidies and guidance of the entrepreneurial projects. Efforts have been made to break the financing bottlenecks by streamlining the approval process, which has helped to cut the financing cost about 25%. The personal loan ceiling for business guarantee has been raised to 300000 yuan while the micro and small firms are entitled to a maximum of 2 million yuan of loan. The city has also launched 37 venture capital investment institutions with the scale of operation exceeding 1.9 billion yuan.
As of the end of October, Xuzhou has trained 195100 people through entrepreneurship training sessions. Some 9000 college graduates have chosen Xuzhou to launch their startups, which has in turn helped to employ 800000 people. Altogether, 800000 people in Xuzhou have launched their startups to hire 337000 workers.
