(Yicai) Sept. 28 -- Suzhou, the richest prefecture-level city in China’s eastern Jiangsu province, has rented eight railway wagons to bring fresh graduates from colleges in Wuhan, where many prestigious universities cluster, and help them find jobs.

Nearly 600 fresh graduates from Wuhan University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan University of Technology, and Huazhong Agricultural University have arrived in Suzhou by train. Round-trip tickets, food, and accommodation will be provided by the Suzhou government.

Suzhou is holding Campus Suzhou Day between Sept. 23 and Dec. 10. Some 110 local employers will be recruiting for 3,590 positions with annual salaries of up to CNY480,000 (USD65,680) in the areas of electronic information, equipment manufacturing, biomedicine, advanced material, scientific research bodies, finance, education, and health. There will also be special service recruitment areas for specific jobs in state-owned enterprises, public institutions, and policy consulting.

Districts and county-level regions under the administration of Suzhou will dispatch staffers to 10 key colleges to hold events to promote the local innovation and entrepreneurial environment and industry-university-research cooperation. They will also host almost 300 in-campus recruitment events in 168 colleges.

Suzhou needs many talents and broad development space for them, as the city boasts an advanced manufacturing industry covering the biopharmaceutical, integrated circuits, and artificial intelligence fields and large research and development investment in emerging sectors, Ding Changfa, an associate professor of economics at Xiamen University, told Yicai.

China entered a phase of negative population growth last year, so cities are competing more intensively over talents and populations now, Ding said. Cities, even the more economically developed ones, should relax their household registration threshold to attract talents and residents, he suggested.

Suzhou’s gross domestic product grew 4.5 percent to CNY1.15 trillion (USD157.3 billion) in the first half of the year from a year earlier, behind only first-tier cities and Chongqing.

Editors: Zhang Yushuo, Futura Costaglione