Contest for young entrepreneurs aims at luring talent back home

It's called the brain drain. Many of the brightest young minds in China flock to the US for a top-notch education and then stay there instead of returning home.

The Chunhui Cup Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition for Overseas Chinese Students, a competition sponsored by China's Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology, is an effort to help the world's second largest economy reverse that flow.

Sun Guoxiang, consul general at the Chinese Consulate General in New York, said on Wednesday that one of the main purposes of the Chunhui Cup was to encourage talented individuals from around the world to seek out China as a place to start and grow new businesses.

Participants in the 2014 Chunhui Cup took part in an awards ceremony and networking opportunity event on Wednesday at the Chinese Consulate General in New York.

Applicants for the program submitted business plans for their projects between April 19 and July 31, and proposals were then judged by a panel of experts.

Nearly 60 of the applicants were invited to attend the awards ceremony, where they collected their awards and had the chance to meet with potential investors.

One participant, who asked not to have his name included because he did not want to deter interest from the business contacts he made at Wednesday's event, said the Chunhui Cup was an opportunity for many Chinese minds to "bring their expertise back to China".

"This [competition] is a chance to bring a project I am excited about back to China," he said. "Not everyone wins top prize, but having your name called is a great feeling and an incredible honor. And just being here gives you a chance to learn a lot."

"My hope for this year's participants is that some of us are lucky enough to be coming back in five or 10 years to give another person this kind of a chance," he said.

Over the past nine years, the competition has selected nearly 1,376 innovative and entrepreneurial programs created by overseas Chinese students and professionals and more than 300 of them are up-and-running businesses in China today.

This year, the Chunhui Cup honored 188 individuals around the world, with 58 of those individuals residing in or around the New York City area.

Ding Jie, deputy consul at the Chinese Consulate General in New York, said the chance for the awardees to meet with investors face-to-face was an invaluable opportunity.

Sun, the Chinese consul general, also said that innovation in China was "developing rapidly", so the need to create a smoother environment for science and technology going forward was paramount - especially when it came to the interaction of scientific innovation and government.

"Our cup is a kind of innovation itself," Sun said on Wednesday.

jackfreifelder@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 09/25/2014 page2)