The eastern coastal city of Qingdao is becoming increasingly attractive to college students due the city's increased efforts to boost emerging industries, improve talent policies and the employment environment, and make it easy to start businesses, said local officials.

Official statistics showed that by the end of July, the rate of recent college graduates choosing to live and work in Shandong reached 82.56 percent. Jinan, Qingdao, Weifang and Yantai were the most popular cities for job-seeking college graduates in Shandong.

The eastern coastal city of Qingdao, Shandong province [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

According to incomplete statistics from the Qingdao Municipal Bureau of Human Resource and Social Security, as of the end of July, 3,068 college graduates from the country's top-tier universities in the "Double World-Class Project" had come to work in the city, accounting for 22 percent of the province's total.

Many of the college graduates were recruited into the city's key industrial fields such as industrial internet, marine science, artificial intelligence and modern finance.

The "Double World-Class Project" was jointly launched by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance and National Development and Reform Commission in 2017 to develop world-class universities and high-quality degree programs.

"With the shift from old to new economic drivers, emerging industries, represented by industrial internet, have taken off in Qingdao. The upgrading of the industrial structure has also improved the talent structure," said Hu Yiying, director of the Qingdao Municipal Bureau of Human Resource and Social Security.

Hu added that more than 80 percent of the new jobs in Qingdao in the first half of the year came from private companies, and 59 percent of the graduates from top-tier universities chose to work in private companies.

"The private sector has helped increase employment opportunities and it is vital to the city's economy. This also reflects that Qingdao is a vibrant city for entrepreneurship, and its appeal to young people is also rising," said Hu.