SHENZHEN has attracted 1,996 high-end professional talents to the city from overseas since the city’s Peacock Plan was launched five years ago, the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported yesterday.

    The Peacock Plan provided high-end talents with rewards and subsidies totaling up to 409 million yuan (US$59 million), the Daily report said.

    A total of 632 professional talents settled down in Shenzhen last year, growing by 7 percent compared with 2015, while 886 professional talents were offered subsidies totaling up to 158 million yuan last year.

    Among the 632 professional talents moving to Shenzhen last year, three-quarters of them are male, while 65 percent of them are between the ages of 31 and 40 and 19 percent are below 30. Over 80 percent of them hold doctorates and 90 percent have overseas educational backgrounds.

    These professionals were hired by 22 universities and scientific research institutes, 10 medical institutions and 233 enterprises in Shenzhen.

    Shenzhen University recruited the most professionals from the Peacock Plan last year, followed by the Southern University of Science and Technology of China, Harbin Institute of Technology Shenzhen Graduate School, Huawei and Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology.

    Statistics show that 20 percent of these professional talents majored in biochemistry, while 14 percent are experts in electronic information and 9 percent are proficient in computer science.

    A panel of judges consisting of 93 top-notch experts in China reviewed the applications of 70 high-end professional talents from overseas last year to qualify them for the Peacock Plan.

    The qualifying standards for overseas high-level professional talents were amended last year and the new standards took effect Oct. 1 last year. The new standards expand the qualifying scale for professionals in financial, medical care and creative and cultural industries.

    The new standards also include a series of new clauses, such as “having worked for the United Nations headquarters or its subordinate financial institutions” or “having acquired licenses of medical practitioners and specialists overseas,” as requirements for applicants, according to the Daily report.

    (Zhang Yang)