Since the beginning of 2023, Qingdao has further improved the entrepreneurship policy system, vigorously put into practice entrepreneurship subsidy policies and rolled out a new round of entrepreneurship guarantee loan policies. By integrating entrepreneurship service platforms and resources, Qingdao has launched service activities targeting entrepreneurship all the year round and the mass entrepreneurship campaign to foster a strong atmosphere of entrepreneurship. As of the end of November 2023, Qingdao has assisted 43,300 people in starting their own business, and was home to 2,114 market entities per 10,000 population, the third most among China’s sub-provincial cities. By the end of 2024, Qingdao will hopefully help a combined total of not fewer than 60,000 people to start their own business and see no fewer than 120,000 jobs created through the entrepreneurship campaign.

Furthermore, Qingdao has held entrepreneurship contests in different forms and on varied themes to gather the total-factor resources and provide accurate matchmaking for entrepreneurs. The China (Qingdao) International Elite Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition alone has drew the participation of more than 2,000 projects from over 40 cities in 30 countries and regions. Prize-winning projects in the competition resulted in 29 newly-established companies in Qingdao, which generated an additional revenue of more than RMB 1.6 bln and over 600 newly-created jobs.  (Ren Xiaomeng)

Part of prize-winning projects sign agreements in the award ceremony of the 2023 Qingdao Overseas Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition.