2014 Amazing China campaign kicks off

The campaign for this year’s “2014 Amazing China-The Most Attractive Chinese Cities for Foreigners” has officially been launched. 10 cities will be chosen at the end of the campaign as being the most attractive cities for foreigners out of a field of 30 candidate cities like Beijing, Suzhou and Xi’an after the voting ends, and expert reviews and other strict and just authoritative judgments are considered.

Hosted by the Information and Research Center of the Foreign Talents of the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs and the magazine of International Talent Exchange, this campaign aims at exploring the charm of Chinese cities and publicizing them through the eyes of foreigners. Such annually held campaign has been successfully organized four years in a row since 2010, gaining a lot of attention from home and abroad.

The most attractive cities, the first time chosen only by the foreign expert judges team, consisting of the Nobel Prize Winners, the foreign experts of the winners of the “Friendship Award” of the Chinese government, “a thousand foreign experts program,” will become important windows for foreigners to have a better understanding of China.

Compared with the previous campaigns, this fifth editions now involves more people with more science indicators.20 of the 30 candidates came out directly as the result of the last four campaigns from 2010 to 2013(nominated more than twice and ranking the top 20 of the average points), the other 10 candidates were picked out by way of “voting and recommendation” by the Foreign Experts Bureaus in China, based on the poll. According to the general conditions in attracting, serving and tapping the potential of the foreign talents, the foreign expert judges team which consists of the Nobel Prize Winners, the foreign experts of the winners of the “Friendship Award” of the Chinese government, “a thousand of foreign experts program” along with other foreigners will select the most attractive cities in accordance to the four criteria of foreigners in policy, administration, working and living environment.

Voting ways mainly include online poll by foreigners, signature polls by foreigners living in China, signing up to vote by the famous foreign expert judges. With the ratio of the three at 1:3:6,the Horizon Research Consultancy Group, a notable investigation agency undertakes the data processing and analysis, thus picking the top 10 cities on the basis of the total points.

Furthermore, questions can be found on the Internet and in the polls and foreigners will be invited to choose “the most eye-catching top 5 prefectures” so as to explore the development of the urbanization of small cities.

With the theme of “The urban openness and the talent introduction,” while it shows talent introduction, the campaign probes into the value orientation of the career of the foreigners living in China, leads the city to attach more attention on the soft environment construction for the talents so as to attract more high-level foreigners to come to China to establish businesses. Relying on the campaign, the selection committee has set a research project of the integrated environmental assessment system for the talent introduction.

During the campaign, the experts will make a comprehensive evaluation and give general advice for the city according to a series of science indicators. Also, foreigners can speak freely through the questionnaires. After the release of the final results, the activity committee will collect the comments and suggestions of the foreigners on each city’s development and bring them into “the integrated environmental assessment report on the city’s talents introduction,” which provides preferences for the attraction of the foreign talents of each city.

The deadline of the poll is September 15, 2014, and by the end of the year the results will be released and approved by the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs and the State Council Information Office.

China Daily, as the chief strategic media partner of this campaign, will undertake the official website construction, the entire publicity, promotions and reports.