Chongqing – The 2025 Chongqing International Talent Exchange Conference opened on November 15, bringing together experts and innovators from around the world, including Portugal, Serbia, Australia and the UK. As a platform for global talent exchange, the event focuses on deepening cooperation in science, technology, and innovation amid growing global demand for top-tier talent.
Under the theme “Pooling Talent in New Chongqing, Joining Efforts for a New Future,” this year’s event spotlights three key areas—conferences, featured activities, and talent recruitment. It aims to draw professionals, spur new innovation and entrepreneurship projects, and create a wide range of cooperation and matchmaking opportunities.
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, speakers outlined new pathways for research collaboration, technology transfer, and the building of innovation ecosystems capable of supporting sustained development. Many guests also described their strong impressions of Chongqing’s rapid progress in recent years, citing its growing appeal to high-tech companies and research organizations.
Rodrigo Martins, President of the European Academy of Sciences and a professor at NOVA University Lisbon, said Chongqing stands out to him as a city that brings together scientific capability, openness, and rich cultural character.
Martins noted that Chongqing has made scientific and technological innovation and talent cultivation a core strategy for development, investing heavily in policies and resources to attract researchers and support 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 said.
Looking ahead, Martins said the European Academy of Sciences will set up its China Center at the Western (Chongqing) Science City, creating a new platform to advance China-Europe cooperation. The center will focus on areas such as transparent and flexible electronics, biosensing, intelligent terminals, and new materials, helping drive high-quality industrial development and speed up the application of scientific breakthroughs.
In an interview with Bridging News, he noted that China—and Chongqing in particular—is making significant strides in attracting the talent needed for major transformations. He emphasized that a strong innovation ecosystem depends on bringing together capable teams rather than relying on individual 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 said. According to him, nurturing complementary research teams that share common goals is essential to turning innovation into real-world impact.
Wajid Hussain, a research assistant at the Beijing Institute of Technology, said he has attended many conferences worldwide, but this one stood out as “one of the best.” He highlighted how the event brought together leading teams focused not only on innovation, but also on essential fields such as energy and other technologies the world depends on.
“These are the real needs of our time,” he said, emphasizing that meaningful global change ultimately relies on people. “To make all these transformations, we need talent.”
From AI talents to real-world cooperation: key topics in focus
The opening ceremony also featured keynote speeches from leaders in frontier technology. Among them was Wang Xingxing, Founder, CEO and CTO of Unitree Robotics Co., Ltd., who spoke about building an innovation ecosystem for young scientific and technological talent. His company’s humanoid robot gained wide attention for its on-site demonstration at the conference.
Wang said Unitree’s journey reflects broader shifts in the industry. “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 said. He emphasized that cultivating young talent depends on building an ecosystem that provides opportunities and support.
“The biggest problem becomes how to better discover young people with potential and give them more staged support and opportunities,” he said, pointing to research funding for university students, tech entrepreneurship competitions and start-up funds as essential tools for nurturing new talent.
Wang also described how future innovation could expand the possibilities of remote 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 said.
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 data showing China’s growing role in the AI field. As of August this year, the combined active users of Baidu, ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba accounted for about 46 percent of the world’s active AI users. Among the top ten AI companies with active users in the world, six are from China. Mayer-Schönberger noted that while China leads in user scale, the United States currently maintains an advantage in annual recurring revenue for AI start-ups, suggesting different strengths in the global competition for AI development.
Marija Gnjatović, State Secretary at Serbia’s Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation, highlighted the importance of commercializing scientific and technological advances. She noted that China is one of Serbia’s key research partners, pointing to joint projects, youth talent exchange programs, and cooperation with institutions 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 said.
As cooperation between China and Serbia deepens, Ivan Pavlovic of Science and Technology Park Nis said there is strong potential for further academic and scientific exchange. “We are very happy to exchange knowledge between our professors and students, especially given China’s tremendous growth over the past ten years,” he said.
He highlighted China’s progress in robotics, the automotive industry and new energy vehicles as areas of particular interest. Pavlovic said future cooperation could expand into life sciences, biomedicine and artificial 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 said.
Chongqing invests 300M yuan in future tech projects
The opening ceremony also kicked off Chongqing’s open competition for major research projects, a flagship initiative aimed at advancing breakthroughs in strategically important technologies. The selected projects are closely aligned with the city’s “416” science and technology innovation framework and its “33618” modern manufacturing cluster system.
This spans a broad range of cutting-edge fields, from integrated circuits, AI, smart vehicles, and robotics to precision medicine, innovative drugs, brain–computer interfaces, advanced materials, green manufacturing, new energy, and energy storage. A total of 48 projects were unveiled, backed by more than 300 million yuan (about 42.3 million U.S. dollars). Among them, 26 key projects will each receive over 5 million yuan, with the largest single award reaching 40 million yuan.
Applications are open to universities, research institutes, enterprises and innovation consortia with strong research capacity and independent legal-person status in China or abroad. Applicants must demonstrate strong research performance and international influence, as well as independent intellectual property rights relevant to their proposals.
Project leaders must be full-time staff of the lead institution, and teams are encouraged to work across entire industrial chains and with partners in industry, academia, and research to address key technological challenges. Interested organizations can apply through the official websites of the Chongqing Municipal Science and Technology Bureau and the Chongqing Municipal Economic and Information Technology Commission.
In addition to the main forum, six industrial talent development conferences were held, focusing on Chongqing’s most competitive industries, including new-generation electronic information manufacturing, intelligent and connected new-energy vehicles, artificial intelligence, life sciences, new materials and green low-carbon technologies.
The conference also unveiled and honored more than a dozen talent development platforms, including the Western China Center of the International Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance and the Western Talent Development Strategy Research Intelligence Alliance. Several cooperation agreements were signed, and new lists of talent opportunities and innovation outcomes were released, giving strong momentum to Chongqing’s efforts to build a globally influential hub for talent and innovation.
