This might be the competition with the highest academic qualifications among participants in Hubei—looking around, there are PhDs everywhere.

On August 22, the 2025 Hubei Postdoctoral Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition Finals were held in Wuhan.

Since its launch in April, the competition has attracted 412 high-level projects and 1,751 doctoral and postdoctoral participants, with 10 academicians leading the teams and over 30 national key laboratories competing. After preliminary, semi-final, and final rounds, 11 projects advanced to the finals.

Why did this competition attract over a thousand postdoctoral participants? What will these cutting-edge projects from the forefront of industry bring to Hubei?

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This year marks the 40th anniversary of China’s postdoctoral system. In 1985, the system officially began its “China chapter,” initiated by renowned physicist Tsung-Dao Lee and decided by Deng Xiaoping.

In today’s global competition for young talent, how does Hubei attract, retain, and nurture postdoctoral researchers to fully unleash their innovative potential? The story of Zhang Shuo, a postdoctoral researcher at Huazhong University of Science and Technology and a participant in this competition, is quite telling.

Although his family is in Hebei, Zhang Shuo firmly chose to begin his postdoctoral research career in Hubei. Why?

First, the application of his project has a huge market in Hubei. At the finals, Zhang Shuo’s team won the top prize with their project, “Adsorption-Based Mobile Processing Equipment for Large Complex Components.” Zhang Shuo admitted: “The high-end equipment industry is known as the ‘crown jewel of industrial manufacturing.’ Hubei’s ongoing efforts to achieve breakthroughs in this industry give our project enormous market potential.”

Additionally, Hubei places great emphasis on talent. “I’ve heard that this year, Hubei’s provincial-level postdoctoral funding will reach hundreds of millions of yuan,” Zhang Shuo said. Since joining the project, he has benefited from a series of funding policies provided by Hubei at various stages, from pre-employment introduction to in-station training. “I feel that Hubei’s emphasis on talent is among the highest in the country.”

The innovation and entrepreneurship competition provides a platform for industry-academia-research integration. By participating, Zhang Shuo and his team hope to connect with more venture capital institutions to secure greater funding for their product’s commercialization—a wish that is already coming true. Zhang Shuo said that since the competition began, several venture capital firms have reached out, and discussions are ongoing.

“In the future, we hope to provide stronger support for Hubei’s high-end equipment industry,” Zhang Shuo said.

The 11 projects that reached the finals cover seven cutting-edge fields: robotics and high-end equipment manufacturing, new-generation information technology and artificial intelligence, new energy and energy conservation, environmental protection, new materials and petrochemicals, and biomedicine and health. These align closely with Hubei’s “51020” advanced manufacturing industrial clusters.

“Innovative achievements can only share in the dividends of Hubei’s high-quality development by integrating into the broader effort of building a pivotal hub,” said one academician at the competition, encouraging postdoctoral researchers to better transform scientific and technological achievements into productive forces and cultivate new economic growth points for Hubei.

“I believe that among today’s competing projects, especially the award-winning ones, there will certainly emerge a number of listed companies and industry leaders in the future,” remarked another academician, noting that the outstanding projects from this competition will form key industrial breakthroughs in Hubei’s journey to accelerate its development as a pivotal hub.

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Upon learning that his project had won the gold medal, Wan Shiming, associate professor at Huazhong Agricultural University and lead of the project on intermuscular bone-free freshwater fish, could hardly contain his excitement. While proud of the team’s honor, he also cared deeply about whether the competition would accelerate the practical application of scientific and technological innovations.

“We participated in this competition to bring our

Hubei

Hubei is a central Chinese province with a rich history dating back to the Bronze Age state of Chu. It is most famous for being the location of the Three Gorges Dam and for its provincial capital, Wuhan, a major historical and transportation hub. The region is also culturally significant as the site of the ancient state of Chu, a distinct and influential culture in early Chinese history.

Wuhan

Wuhan is a major city in central China, formed in 1927 through the merger of the three historic towns of Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang. It is historically significant as the site of the 1911 Wuchang Uprising, which led to the fall of the Qing Dynasty. The city is also a modern transportation hub and a center for education and research.

China

China is an ancient civilization with over 4,000 years of recorded history, home to successive imperial dynasties and foundational philosophical traditions like Confucianism. It is renowned for its vast collection of cultural heritage sites, including the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and the Terracotta Army. Today, it stands as a modern global power while continuing to preserve its profound historical legacy.

Tsung-Dao Lee

Tsung-Dao Lee is a Nobel Prize-winning Chinese-American physicist, not a place or cultural site. He and his colleague Chen Ning Yang received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on the violation of the parity law in weak nuclear interactions, a fundamental discovery in particle physics.

Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping was a paramount leader of the People’s Republic of China, not a physical place or cultural site. He is most famous for being the chief architect of China’s economic reforms and “Reform and Opening-Up” policy in the late 20th century, which dramatically transformed the country’s economy and set it on a path toward global significance.

Huazhong University of Science and Technology

Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) is a major public research university located in Wuhan, China. It was founded in 1952 through the merger of several institutional predecessors, originally established to advance education in science, engineering, and medicine. Today, it is a comprehensive university renowned for its engineering programs and is a member of China’s prestigious Project 985.

Hebei

Hebei is a northern Chinese province that encircles the national capital, Beijing. Historically, it was a crucial region containing parts of the Great Wall and served as the heartland of the Yan and Zhao states during the Warring States period. Its name, which means “North of the River,” refers to its position north of the Yellow River.

Huazhong Agricultural University

Huazhong Agricultural University is a comprehensive public university in Wuhan, China, with a history dating back to its founding in 1898 as Hubei Agricultural School. It is a key national university directly administered by the Ministry of Education, renowned for its strengths in life sciences, agriculture, and its contributions to agricultural research and talent cultivation.