The 2025 Hangzhou International Human Resources and Exchange Conference takes place in the capital of Zhejiang province. [Photo/tidenews.com.cn]

The 2025 Hangzhou International Human Resources and Exchange Conference opened with a bang on Sept 28 in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province.

The city has emerged as a top hub for talent and innovation, ranking 13th among global science and technology clusters. Since 2020, it's attracted over 2.4 million university graduates under 35 and officially registered more than 190,000 high-level talent.

At the event, Hangzhou unveiled new policies to deepen reforms in talent development, including special recruitment programs in AI and 200 additional slots for city-level recognition. The city will also select 200 Qianjiang Distinguished Experts annually to support key academic–industry roles.

A highlight of the opening was the launch of six innovation pilot zones — spanning aerospace information, embodied intelligence, AI-healthcare integration, digital fashion, biomedicine and AI applications.

The zones aim to cluster resources, pioneer policy breakthroughs and foster the integration of emerging industries.

The event also kicked off a competition inviting global AI teams to develop applications based on leading large models such as Qwen and DeepSeek, with finals scheduled for November. Six international forums on talent and industry cooperation will follow.

Since 2009, the conference has become a flagship platform linking Zhejiang with the world. Hangzhou now aims to build a higher-level innovation-driven city powered by talent, science and industry.

Talent swarm to a jobs fair in Hangzhou. [Photo/tidenews.com.cn]