SAN FRANCISCO, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Overseas Chinese students in northern California are welcome to apply for the upcoming 14th Chunhui Cup Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition (San Francisco Division) to deliver their innovation dreams, a senior Chinese diplomat said Saturday.
The Chunhui Cup competition aims to mobilize overseas Chinese students to start business back in China and encourage them to take an active part in applying for innovation projects, said Zou Yonghong, Chinese deputy consul general in San Francisco, at a promotional event.
All the participants will receive support to help them connect with domestic entrepreneurship bases for overseas students, science parks of universities, and economic development zones to grow their projects, she said.
Since the Chunhui Cup competition was first launched in 2006, more than 2,528 innovation projects have been selected for development, and 448 winners of the contest returned to China and started key enterprises in 76 cities across the country, Zou said.
Tang Yun, education counselor of the Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco, which hosted the San Francisco Division of the competition, said the contest is the first overseas project of the Chunhui Cup competition launched in 2013.
"A lot of experiences have been accumulated during the past six years, and 221 projects selected from 450 applications in the San Francisco consular districts have been qualified for the competition between 2013 and 2018," Tang said.
The San Francisco consular districts include northern California and the U.S. states of Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Alaska.
Yiqing Ding, co-president of the Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Stanford University, said the competition offers a good opportunity for Chinese students studying in the United States.
"For overseas Chinese students who have lived a long time outside China and became less informed of the latest development in their homeland, the competition provides an effective platform for the students to keep updated about innovation in China and help them connect with enterprises, investors and other resources in China," he said.
"I believe many students will show much interest in the contest and deliver their talent," he added.
The Chunhui Cup, sponsored by China's Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology, is a competition that encourages young Chinese to start businesses back in China.
Numerous colleges, institutions, research centers, and corporations that operate in China attend this annual event as an important approach to adding more assets to their teams.
