Sprinting to tens of millions of people, the northern provincial capital is desperately "grabbing people"

National Business Daily

2024-06-13 00:22Published on the official account of Sichuan Daily Economic News

Every reporter: Liu Xuqiang Every editor: Yang Huan

Sprinting to tens of millions of people, the northern provincial capital is desperately "grabbing people"

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Tens of millions of people and trillions of GDP have always been the two "enduring topics" in China's urban competition.

Different from the substantial expansion of the "trillion GDP club", the national population has declined for two consecutive years, the population market has peaked, the war for people has become a zero-sum game, and the battle for tens of millions of people will only become more intense.

Especially in the graduation season every year, it is a round of "talent grabbing".

The latest to join the fray is Jinan, the provincial capital, which is home to 52 universities in the country. The total number of college graduates in Shandong in 2024 exceeds 800,000, and the number of college graduates in Shandong has also hit a new high.

On June 12, Jinan launched the first "Haiyou Talent Day" to pay tribute to the majority of talents in the name of the city. Prior to this (May 11), Jinan also held the first high-level talent recruitment conference, launching 26,000 jobs for key industries and key areas.

Behind the open door is the sense of urgency that Jinan is approaching the timeline of 10 million people. According to Shandong's plan, the total permanent population of Jinan is expected to be around 10 million by 2025. According to last year's permanent population (9.437 million), Jinan's increase of 22,000 people is obviously not enough to support its completion of the scheduled target.

More importantly, the provincial capital city has become the "strongest engine" for the provinces to continue to maintain population growth, and will Jinan help Shandong get rid of two consecutive years of negative population growth?

Intensive "shots"

Jinan has always had a sense of crisis and urgency.

As early as 2017, the local government bluntly said: the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration in the north, the strong pressure from Nanjing, Hefei and other cities in the south, and Zhengzhou in the west was identified as a national central city. ”

He also suggested to the province that the provincial capital strategy should be implemented with the strength of the whole province, and if Jinan is strong, Shandong will be strong.

Later, at the end of 2018, the State Council approved Shandong Province to adjust the administrative division of Laiwu City, Jinan City, abolish the prefecture-level Laiwu City, and the area under its jurisdiction was transferred to the management of Jinan City. From 2018 to 2019, Jinan's permanent population increased by more than 1.44 million to 8.9087 million.

After that, Jinan also took the lead in introducing the "zero threshold settlement" policy among sub-provincial cities in the country in 2020. Also in this year, Qingdao's permanent population exceeded 10 million for the first time, reaching 10.072 million. In contrast, when the population of Jinan, the provincial capital, will exceed 10 million, which has become a very urgent issue in its development process.

In recent years, Jinan has intensively "shot" - since 2021, in the name of "a city", a graduation ceremony has been held for college students for two consecutive years, and the secretary of the municipal party committee has personally appeared to promote the city;

In 2022, the "Jinan Talent Service Support Policy (30 Articles)", "Jinan Talent Development Environment Policy (30 Articles)" and then the "Jinan City Support for the Employment and Entrepreneurship of College Graduates (40 Articles)" will be released, continuing to increase the weight and attract talents with real money;

In 2023, Jinan will hold the first "Haiyou Talent Festival" to carry out a series of talent attraction, innovation and entrepreneurship, achievement transformation and talent service activities, and provide a series of discounts such as accommodation, entertainment and entertainment for job seekers.

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However, judging from the increase in permanent population in the past three years, Jinan's population growth is slowing down step by step.

In 2021, Jinan's permanent population increased by 92,000, in 2022 by 79,000, and by 2023, the increase has shrunk to 22,000. According to the calculation of Jinan's permanent population of 9.437 million at the end of 2023, there is still a gap of more than 560,000 people from the 10 million population.

"As the capital of a major economic province with a permanent population of more than 100 million and the third largest GDP in the country, Jinan must complete a task with a population of 10 million." Zeng Gang, dean of the Urban Development Research Institute of East China Normal University, said in an interview with Uncle Cheng that Jinan needs to go further in order to be a leader in the development of the province. "Focusing too much on talent attraction at the end and emphasizing the support of financial incentives and subsidies will be unsustainable in the long run."

How to "strengthen the heart"

A practical problem is that as a provincial capital, it is difficult for Jinan to form a strong center model.

Similarly to Jinan, Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province, has a population of around 9.5 million and a target population of 10 million by 2025. Not long ago, Nanjing further relaxed the conditions for settlement, and launched the policy of "housing can be settled" after liberalizing the threshold for college students to settle down, suburban settlement, and lowering the points settlement.

Some experts pointed out that from the perspective of the first degree of provincial capitals, there are two development models: one is that inland provincial capitals are often the largest cities, as provincial central cities, they are the main growth engines of the province's population; The other is the "Tale of Two Cities" in the coastal provinces, from Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, all the way to Shandong, Hebei, Liaoning, basically the same.

Judging from the data of the past 10 years, Xi'an, Zhengzhou, Wuhan, Changsha and other strong provincial capitals in the central and western regions have been promoted to the 10 million population club one after another. Among the provincial capitals with Jinan at the same level of 9 million+, there are also Hefei, Nanjing, Harbin, Shenyang, Changchun, etc. Among them, Hefei won the 2023 population increase championship, with a permanent population of 9.853 million, which is only one step away from the "10 million population club".

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"Population is the result, not the means", Zeng Gang suggested that the policy benefits should be higher and longer through "nesting and attracting phoenixes", "appropriately shift the focus of support policies forward, focus on entrepreneurship and employment scenarios, and at the same time make talent policies more accurate and in-depth docking with Jinan's emerging industries." ”

With the development of intelligent industry, the situation of population competition is forming a new impact - the champion city of population increase in recent years, such as Hefei, has vigorously developed emerging industries including new energy vehicles, photovoltaics, and integrated circuits; Xi'an has developed high-tech industries such as communications and low-altitude economy, thereby driving the improvement of the city's primacy.

At present, Jinan is making every effort to build a modern industrial system, and the scale of the four leading pillar industries of big data and new generation information technology industry, intelligent manufacturing and high-end equipment industry, fine steel and advanced materials industry, and biomedicine and health industry has reached 1.6 trillion yuan.

At the first high-level talent recruitment conference held in Jinan not long ago, enterprises in these fields became the protagonists, including Inspur Group, China National Heavy Duty Truck, Jinan Second Machine Tool, Qilu Pharmaceutical and other industry leaders.

With the production of people, Jinan has more possibilities. Not long ago, Jinan issued the "Action Plan for the High-quality Development of Jinan's Aerospace Information Industry (2024-2027)", striving to build itself into a leading aerospace information application demonstration zone, an innovation benchmark city and a new highland for advanced manufacturing.

Aerospace information is a cross-industry between the high-end equipment manufacturing industry and the new generation of information technology industry, covering the low-altitude economy, space-ground integration development and application. Relevant data predicts that by 2025, the scale of the global aerospace information industry will exceed one trillion yuan.

Dual-core support

A phenomenon that has attracted attention is that the population in Shandong Province is shifting to Qingdao and Jinan.

The data shows that in the five years from 2012 to 2017, the permanent population of 16 cities in Shandong has grown positively, and the province is relatively average; Qingdao and Jinan increased by 422,000 and 434,100 respectively, although the number is quite large, but it is not too prominent.

However, in the five years from 2017 to 2022, the situation has changed, and there are already 8 cities in Shandong with negative growth, accounting for half; The permanent population of Qingdao and Jinan increased by 1,051,600 and 717,500 respectively, basically doubling compared with 2012-2017.

Also in 2022, Shandong's permanent population will change from increasing to declining for the first time in 40 years, and the population decline will further expand in 2023. From the perspective of cities in the province, among the 16 cities in 2023, only Jinan and Qingdao will maintain positive population growth, and the remaining 14 cities will fall into a negative growth situation.

However, in terms of attracting a nationwide population, the advantages of Qingdao and Jinan are not obvious. Taking provincial capitals as an example, in 2023, Hefei will increase by 219,000, Zhengzhou will increase by 180,000, Hangzhou will increase by 146,000, Chengdu will increase by 135,000, Xi'an and Kunming will also increase by about 80,000, and Qingdao and Jinan will not exceed 30,000.

Some experts pointed out that in recent years, Shandong's population flow has become more obvious, and in addition to the flow to Qingdao and Jinan in the province, there are also flows to other provinces. As for the reason for the low inflow of population from outside the province, to a certain extent, it also shows that Shandong's industrial structure dominated by traditional manufacturing industry, jobs and salary levels are relatively less attractive to labor outside the province.

For Shandong, continuing to revitalize the real economy, vigorously developing advanced manufacturing clusters, making overall plans for the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries and the cultivation and growth of strategic emerging industries, and promoting the industry to move towards the middle and high-end, on the one hand, can alleviate the crisis of "getting old before getting rich", and on the other hand, it is also conducive to expanding employment and improving productivity.

Not long ago, Shandong issued the "Top Ten Innovations" Action Plan (2024-2025), proposing that about 10 provincial-level strategic emerging industrial clusters and about 10 advanced manufacturing clusters will be newly cultivated in 2024, and the added value of the "four new" economy will increase by about 10%; By 2025, there will be 50 strategic emerging industrial clusters and 30 advanced manufacturing clusters at or above the provincial level, creating an excellent industrial ecology with optimized structure, active innovation, safety and stability, and open cooperation.

In terms of talents, it is mentioned that it will strive to attract more than 1.4 million young talents in two years; By 2025, the proportion of R&D expenditure in GDP will exceed the national average, and the number of high-value invention patents per 10,000 people will exceed 10, accelerating the transformation of talent development from scale growth to efficiency improvement and ecological optimization.

As a double engine for development, the number of new talents in Jinan has remained at "100,000+" every year in the past three years, and Qingdao has proposed to introduce 150,000 young talents in 2024, and has launched corresponding support policies. Zeng Gang said that when the soft environment for talent development is improved, and the vitality of local industries and economies is enhanced, people will naturally come. In other words, talent policies are easy to be imitated and copied, and talent ecology is the lasting competitiveness.

National Business Daily

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