A crowd of foreign participants gather to watch a robot-operated tea art demonstration during the 2024 China-Europe Talent Forum in Beijing on October 15, 2024.
The world today is witnessing accelerated changes unseen in a century. A new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is forging ahead, bringing profound shifts to the landscape of global talent competition. Cross-border mobility of talents and cross-regional collaborative innovation have become the key to driving global economic recovery and tackling global development challenges.
Talents hold the key to good governance, serving as an important indicator to gauge a country’s comprehensive national strength.
“We are closer than ever before to the goal of national rejuvenation, and we crave talents more now than at any other time in history,” said Chinese President Xi Jinping in his remarks in October 2013 at a gathering to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Western Returned Scholars Association, an organization formed by Chinese returnees from abroad. This conclusion makes it clear that a more proactive, open-minded, and effective talent policy must be pursued.
International talent cooperation constitutes an essential component of China’s high-standard opening-up and the strategy of invigorating the country by developing a quality workforce. Development is the top priority, talent the primary resource, and innovation the primary driving force of growth. On the basis of fostering talents independently, China shall continue to deepen international talent exchanges and mutual learning, and advance the integrated development of education, science and technology, and talent cultivation.
Since the founding of the China-Europe Talent Forum in 2018, Beijing has taken an active role in its organization since 2020. The forum has gradually grown into a key platform for the city to implement the important instructions of President Xi, take on national missions, and strengthen cooperation and exchanges with Europe in the talent domain.
The forum adheres to its permanent theme of “Sharing, Coexistence, and Win-win”. With the core objectives being in-depth exchanges and practical cooperation, the events it organizes are “small-scale yet high-caliber, pragmatic and innovative”. It keeps innovating its content and presentation formats, striving to build a national-level diplomatic platform for talent-related affairs that features both global vision and Chinese characteristics. Today, the forum has grown into an important bridge for deepening China-Europe relations and advancing exchanges and cooperation. It lends solid support to Beijing’s endeavor to build a world-class talent hub and serves China’s overall opening-up drive. It is also of great practical significance for advancing mutual learning among Chinese and European civilizations.
Foreign guests engage in a dialogue during the 2024 China-Europe Talent Forum in Beijing on October 15, 2024.
Expanding Opening-up
The talents a country has lay the foundation for its sustainable development. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, President Xi, from the perspective of national rejuvenation and global development, has put forward a series of important expositions on developing talent in China. These expositions offer profound answers to major theoretical and practical questions concerning talent-related work in the new era, deliver top-level design and strategic planning for China’s talent development, and chart the course and provide guidance for the development and operation of the forum as well as in-depth exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and European talents.
As it furthers opening-up, China shall continue to focus on people and take a people-centered approach. This will help broaden its workforce’s horizons, open their minds, and advance their knowledge and technical expertise. China warmly welcomes outstanding talents from every country to participate in its modernization drive.
Opening-up in the talent realm constitutes a vital component of high-standard opening-up. Isolation cannot produce top-tier innovative talents, nor can working behind closed doors deliver greater self-reliance and strength in science and technology. To build a country that has a strong base of talents, it is important to foster and expand home-grown talent pools. Equally important is to open wider to the world, proactively connect with the global talent market, and build international platforms for talent dialogue and cooperation.
The forum serves as an important carrier for implementing China’s talent opening-up policies. It invites top European experts and young talents to take part in exchanges and cooperation in China, showcasing Beijing’s talent policies and innovation-driven entrepreneurship ecosystem. Meanwhile, it organizes special events in Europe on a regular basis to present China’s development opportunities, and facilitates academic visits and research by Chinese scholars in Europe. By breaking down geographical barriers and closing divides in the way of thinking, the forum establishes regular two-way talent circulation channels and fully embodies China’s open and inclusive philosophy for talent development.
In the beginning, the forum was jointly initiated by the Chinese embassy in Switzerland and Swiss Adecco Group. Its first two sessions were held in Zurich, Switzerland, focusing primarily on dialogues between China and Switzerland in the talent sector and establishing communication channels for human-resource-related exchanges between the two countries.
In April 2019, during then President of Swiss Confederation Ueli Maurer’s state visit to China, President Xi gave important instructions on China-Europe talent-related exchanges, creating major opportunities for the forum’s development and upgrading. In 2020, Beijing formally deepened its participation in forum operations. The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Talent Work and the Adecco Group established a long-term rotating hosting mechanism: sessions to be held in Beijing in even-numbered years and in Europe in odd-numbered years. The third China-Europe Talent Forum convened for the first time in Beijing as a parallel forum of the Zhongguancun Forum, marking its formal anchoring in China’s capital and ushering in a new phase of rotating sessions between China and Europe.
Each subsequent session has witnessed continuous optimization and upgrading, expanding its outreach to more European countries. What began as a China-Swiss bilateral platform has evolved into a platform serving China-Europe talent cooperation, entering a new stage of higher-quality and efficient development.
International students from the Jiangsu Vocational College of Business visit the Nantong Kite Museum in Nantong, Jiangsu Province on June 24, 2026.
Building a Global Community for Talent Cooperation
International talent cooperation is not a zero-sum game. Every country has its own strengths in talent resources. Mutual benefit and win-win results shall be upheld to ensure the orderly flow of knowledge, technology, and talents, and collaborative cooperation should be promoted to jointly address global challenges.
China and Europe complement each other in terms of talent structure, research priorities, and industrial sectors. European countries boast profound strength in basic research and a high concentration of high-end engineers and technicians. China, for its part, has a large pool of young innovators, a vast market, and well-developed industrial supporting systems.
The forum strives to build a platform for talent cooperation which features equal-footed dialogue and mutual benefit. The forum focuses on the joint training of high-caliber talents and collaborative research on scientific projects. It also advances exchanges in the human resources industry, youth innovation and entrepreneurship, and mutual learning of talent development policies and experiences. Tangible cooperation projects enable talents, universities, and enterprises from both China and Europe to benefit together. Talent cooperation consolidates the cultural and people-to-people foundation for the China-EU comprehensive strategic partnership.
After years of development, the forum has established a multi-party collaborative organizational structure with clearly defined powers and responsibilities. The multi-stakeholder model that it utilizes, featuring governments, international corporations, universities, foreign-affairs authorities, and scientific research institutions, helps form a robust working synergy that effectively pulls together policy, industrial, scientific and technological, educational, and diplomatic resources.
The innovative rotating hosting mechanism of the forum gives full play to Beijing’s strengths as China’s center for international exchanges, and the Beijing-hosted sessions present China’s talent policies and sci-tech innovation opportunities to European talents. When hosted in Europe, sessions attract in-depth participation from local talents and institutions, building a balanced and sustainable framework for talent-focused dialogue.
Foreign visitors enjoy an immersive cultural experience traveling back to China’s Sui and Tang dynasties by means of a XR Immersive Theater located in a commercial area named Shendu Shisanfang in Luoyang, Henan Province on April 8, 2026.
Boosting Collaborative Innovation
Promoting the integrated development of education, science and technology, and talent is China’s major strategic decision based on a sound grasp of the laws that govern the modernization drive. Talents constitute the foundation for innovation, and education underpins talent cultivation. International talent exchanges connect two major sectors: international educational cooperation and cross-border scientific and technological innovation.
At a symposium for scientists held in Beijing in September 2020, President Xi called for strengthening international sci-tech cooperation and pledged more efforts by the Chinese government to integrate into the global innovation network and enhance China’s sci-tech innovation capability through open cooperation.
Upholding coordinated efforts by governments, industries, universities, and research institutes, the forum fully mobilizes various stakeholders including government authorities, prestigious universities, leading enterprises, and international human-resource institutions. It supports Peking University and other Chinese universities in building university-enterprise cooperation bases together with European universities and multinationals, by rolling out programs for joint talent training, internships, and practical placements, as well as joint research projects. The forum creates a full-fledged cooperation chain covering talent cultivation, scientific research innovation, and industrial application.
Being committed to practical cooperation and culture exchange, the forum has helped in delivering a host of tangible achievements.
First, the forum has formed many mechanisms for joint training of high-caliber talents. For example, the Adecco Group has cooperated with Peking University, offering international internship opportunities and career guidance for Chinese students to cultivate interdisciplinary talents with global competence.
Second, think tanks share their research results on talent-related issues at the forum. The forum has successively released research outputs including the Global City Talent Retention Index. It carries out joint research on cutting-edge topics such as global city talent attractiveness and the transformation of labor markets driven by artificial intelligence, providing decision-making references for governments and enterprises in China and Europe to formulate talent policies.
Third, the forum has served as a platform for young-talent exchanges. As an affiliated event of the forum, the Youth Sub-Forum has built regular offline exchange venues for young talents from China and Europe. It helps improve the development environment for young talents coming to China in terms of policy support, cultural experience, and daily life, consolidating the foundation for cooperation among young talents.
Fourth, the forum further deepens the talent-focused cooperation in industry and sci-tech innovation. At the forum held in Beijing in 2024, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed to support the settlement of international scientific and technological organizations in Beijing. This will foster an agglomeration effect of international sci-tech organizations in the city, facilitate high-profile international sci-tech exchange events there, encourage talents to engage in activities hosted by international sci-tech organizations, and continuously improve services and support for such organizations and relevant talents. It also helps advance the establishment of innovation-driven entrepreneurship cooperation platforms, and boost Beijing’s endeavor to build an international sci-tech innovation center at a faster pace.
Talents are not only a major force for scientific-technological innovation, but also important envoys for inter-civilizational dialogue. China and Europe differ in history, culture and development paths. People-to-people exchanges and talent interaction can effectively deepen mutual understanding and trust between them, reduce cognitive biases, as well as build consensus for cooperation.
Over the years, the development of the forum represents Beijing’s proactive exploration and vigorous practice in implementing the important instructions of President Xi. Drawing on its role as China’s capital, Beijing takes on national tasks for China-Europe talent cooperation and integrates local talent-related work into the national strategy for building a stronger talent base for the country and the overall development of the China-Europe comprehensive strategic partnership.
Targeting national requirements, local strengths and international cooperation priorities, the forum has a clear development pathway, ample support of resources, and broad future prospects. It advances people-to-people ties through talent exchanges, gives play to the unique role of talents as non-governmental friendship envoys, and fosters mutual understanding between Chinese and European civilizations. By supporting the building of a talent-strong country via high-level international talent cooperation, the forum is delivering a steady stream of talent-driven impetus for the long-term growth of the China-Europe comprehensive strategic partnership. 
XIA YIPU is an associate research fellow at the Academy of Marxism, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
