The HICOOL 2025 Global Entrepreneur Summit opened in Beijing on Thursday, attracting a record-high number of participants to a series of activities including an entrepreneurship competition, exhibitions, signing events and forums.
The three-day summit focuses on sci-tech innovation, industrial integration, international cooperation, and youth power.
The entrepreneurship competition of the summit, focusing on cutting-edge fields including artificial intelligence and integrated circuits, attracted 13,150 innovation enthusiasts from 139 countries and regions, bringing with them 10,055 entrepreneurial projects.
"By participating in this competition, we have been able to clarify our company's overall business plan, which I think is very helpful to the enterprise. Some government resources we intend to align with are in the continuous interaction and matchmaking activities with us," said Guo Yandong, leader of an award-winning project in the competition.
The summit launched a series of key projects, including the Overseas University Sci-Tech Achievement Transformation Base, and a one-stop service platform for international professionals' innovation and entrepreneurship.
The summit also features 11 sub-stages such as a reception area, an international human professionals' recruitment market, industry collaborations, and venture capital matchmaking, to display the latest achievements in cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence, biomedicine, integrated circuits, and new energy.
"We hope that every participant of the summit, whether they are investors, entrepreneurs, international cooperation agencies, industrial parks, technology incubators, or universities, could have some gains at the summit," said Wu Yi, an organizer of the summit.
A series of supporting activities, including a sci-tech-themed consumption festival and the "Beijing sci-tech tour" will also be held during the summit.
"Beijing will continuously optimize its business environment and strengthen institutional and policy innovations to provide desirable support and guarantee for professionals coming to the city for development," said Liu Guangyi, deputy director of Beijing Talent Work Bureau.
Since its inception in 2020, the HICOOL summit has drawn the participation of over 45,000 entrepreneurs and 34,000 startup projects from 167 countries and regions.
Global entrepreneur summit opens in Beijing with record participation
Factories in many places across China have already been operating in full capacity as early as one month before the Spring Festival, the country's grandest traditional festival, to respond to people's ardent hope and enthusiasm for the Chinese New Year.
Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, falls on Feb 17 this year.
At a lantern plant in Nanli Village in north China's Shanxi Province, from cutting the wire to welding the frame, from pasting the silk cloth to drawing the patterns, nearly 100 workers are working in close collaboration.
In the structuring workshop, workers are using welding torches to weld ordinary iron wires into shapes such as dragons, phoenixes, and horses amidst flying sparks.
Meanwhile, the craftsmen are mounting carefully selected silk fabric onto the iron skeleton, making sure the form of dragon head, leaping horse, and other figures to be upright and dignified.
At a major cut flower farm in Xixian New Area of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, eight production lines are operating at full capacity to meet the demand for the upcoming grand festival.
Each stalk of flower takes only one hour from picking to finished product, ensuring it is shipped to all parts of the country in a fresher state.
The farm offers a variety of flowers, including anthurium, a star product in recent years for its colorful patterns and auspicious meanings.
This kind of flower originally grew only in tropical rainforests, but advanced technology has enabled various flowers to be cultivated in different seasons and regions.
The 50,000-square-meter greenhouse adopted intelligent IoT environmental control system, which can acquire real-time information on temperature, humidity, light, wind speed, and pests and diseases, and technicians can remotely control the system at the terminal to ensure the plants are in optimal growth condition.
Such precision regulation allows flowers to grow vigorously while also blooming according to order demand, thereby improving the supply efficiency during festive periods.
This year's Chinese New Year flower season started taking orders a month earlier than last year, and the current order volume has exceeded 3 million yuan, an increase of 30 percent compared with the same period last year, and the total order amount is expected to exceed 10 million yuan, according to operators.
The flowers are not only sold to many domestic cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu, but also exported to overseas markets such as Singapore and South Korea.
The thriving business has also boosted local employment. Currently, the dozens of full-time employees at the farm are all from surrounding villages and towns, and the farm also hires hundreds of seasonal temporary workers every year.
Preparation for Spring Festival activities, goods in full swing
