With a real-time population of 165 million, Guangdong is still going all out to attract talents.

On September 22, the International Forum on Rule of Law in China (2026) was held in Shenzhen. Huang Kunming, Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee, stated in his speech at the forum that the current real-time resident population in Guangdong is approximately 165 million.

What does 165 million mean? On a global scale, this figure ranks among the top 10 worldwide, exceeding the total population of Russia and Japan. Even so, Guangdong is still sparing no effort to "recruit talents" across the country.

The annual graduation and job-hunting season has arrived, and Guangdong has taken a very aggressive move: organizing a delegation to "recruit talents" across the country.

Multiple cities in Guangdong form a team to "recruit talents" in Beijing and the Yangtze River Delta

An ancient saying goes, "Achievements are accomplished by talents, and careers thrive with the support of talents" — talents are the prerequisite for the development of all undertakings, and without talents, everything is empty talk. Guangdong is well aware of this, so it has directly dispatched its special autumn recruitment train to Beijing, the Yangtze River Delta, and Wuhan, a key hub city in central China, where the density of Chinese college students is the highest.

On September 16, the "1 Million Talents Gather in Southern Guangdong" 2026 N-city Joint Autumn Recruitment Campaign was launched simultaneously in Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan.

This is a large-scale event. Throughout the autumn recruitment season, Guangdong plans to visit 14 provinces and municipalities across the country and hold 100 special job fairs for universities. From September 16 to 22 alone, it will visit 55 key universities intensively, organize more than 8,500 employer sessions online and offline, and offer more than 400,000 job positions in total.

Among them, the Yangtze River Delta stop is led by Guangzhou. Over 5 days, covering 3 cities of Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou, 17 universities and 17 job fairs will be held. Guangzhou alone has organized nearly 3,000 employers, bringing more than 140,000 job positions, of which over 9,420 positions offer an annual salary of 500,000 to 1 million yuan, and more than 600 positions offer an annual salary of over 1 million yuan.

This is not an ordinary campus recruitment, but more like a talent-focused version of "national investment attraction".

In the past, when enterprises recruited people, they basically carried out recruitment separately. Tencent went to one school one day, GAC went to another school the next day, and enterprises contacted schools by themselves, held presentations on their own, and screened resumes on their own.

This time, the "N-city Joint Recruitment" is different, which mainly has four highlights:

First, the whole province forms a delegation, cities take the lead, the government builds the platform, and enterprises participate together.

Second, precise matching with "one tailored policy for one university". For example, Shanghai Jiao Tong University has advantageous majors in naval architecture and ocean engineering, so Guangdong brought enterprises such as Guangzhou Shipyard International and Huangpu Wenchong there; when arriving at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, more than 50 financial enterprises participated at one time. Tongji University has strong disciplines in civil engineering and urban and rural planning, which exactly matches the employment needs of Guangzhou in urban construction and rail transit. No matter which university has advantageous disciplines, Guangdong will organize corresponding industrial chain enterprises to recruit talents on site.

Third, AI-related positions are significantly increased, with no less than 10% of positions at each job fair related to AI, and more than 26% in some special sessions. Even traditional enterprises such as Guangzhou Public Transport Group are recruiting AI large model algorithm engineers.

Fourth, non-fresh graduates can also get access to the opportunities. A large number of high-quality internship positions are released simultaneously, so junior students can lock in practical opportunities in the Greater Bay Area in advance.

To welcome talents from all over the country, Guangzhou has shown full sincerity. For example, if a doctorate holder comes to Guangzhou for employment and settles down, the municipal government will provide a maximum settling-in allowance of 100,000 to 200,000 yuan, and the district government will provide a maximum additional living subsidy of 120,000 yuan; master's and bachelor's degree holders can also get 30,000 to 60,000 yuan respectively. Nansha is even more generous: travel expenses for interviews are reimbursed, interns can move into their accommodation with luggage, and continuous living subsidies will be issued for 30 months after employment, with 1,000 yuan per month for bachelor's degree holders, 2,000 yuan for master's degree holders and 4,000 yuan for doctorate holders. The working-age population aged 16 to 59 in Guangdong accounts for 66.31%, nearly 6 percentage points higher than the national average, making the population young and dynamic.

How big is the "phoenix tree" of Guangdong?

The ancients said that a fine bird chooses a proper tree to nest in — and the "phoenix tree" of Guangdong is large enough.

In 2025, Guangdong's GDP reached 14.58 trillion yuan, ranking first nationwide for 37 consecutive years. Its permanent resident population exceeded 127 million, ranking first nationwide for 19 consecutive years. In 2025, 18 Guangdong-based enterprises were listed in the Fortune Global 500, and the number of listed enterprises at home and abroad exceeded 1,200, leading far ahead across the country.

Saint-Exupéry, the author of *The Little Prince*, once said: "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood, but teach them to long for the vast sea." This talent recruitment campaign of Guangdong is exactly bringing the "vast sea" directly in front of students. How big is this "sea" of Guangdong?

Statistics show that Guangdong has formed 10 trillion-level industrial clusters. What does this mean? As major economic provinces, Zhejiang has 5, Shandong has 4, and Jiangsu currently has 6 manufacturing industries with a scale exceeding 1 trillion yuan, and it has also put forward the goal of striving to cultivate 9 trillion-level industrial clusters by the end of the 15th Five-Year Plan period.

A single trillion-level industrial cluster is extremely rare, but Guangdong has 10 of them, which means that every industrial track in Guangdong has broad development space, and people from all walks of life can find their own development opportunities here.

More importantly, this "sea" can not only "accommodate ships", but also "build ships". Ma Huateng founded Tencent in Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen in 1998, and developed it from a small company into a global giant; He Xiaopeng chose Guangzhou for both of his two entrepreneurial ventures, and after UC, he founded Xpeng Motors, which has grown into a leading new energy vehicle enterprise.

Of course, young people today have different demands.

In the past, the most important question for job seekers might be: "How much is the monthly salary?" Now more and more people will also ask: Is this industry promising? Is there too much overtime? Can I afford the rent? Are there places for entertainment on weekends? Can I really settle down in this city?

And the core competitiveness of Guangdong lies not only in its industries, but also in its quality of life.

As we all know, the core cities of the Greater Bay Area including Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan and Dongguan have the industrial density, employment opportunities and public services of first-tier cities, while retaining a rich and lively everyday atmosphere. You can still find food stalls and dessert shops late at night; you can take a walk by the Pearl River after work, and go hiking, enjoy the sea or soak in hot springs within one or two hours on weekends.

That's why Guangdong has huge appeal to young people, and it is the major economic province with the youngest population structure, without exception. Statistics show that Guangdong has been the only province in China with a birth population of over 1 million for many consecutive years, which keeps its population structure continuously younger.

According to the data of the 7th National Census, the proportion of the population aged 60 and above in Guangdong is only 12.35%, far lower than that of other eastern provinces. The proportion of the population aged 15 to 59 in Guangdong is as high as 68.80%, the highest in the country, followed by Beijing (68.53%) and Zhejiang (67.86%).

Ultimately, the "law of attraction" also applies between people and cities: only young people can attract more young people; places with a large number of young people will attract even more young people. This is the core competitiveness of Guangdong.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "City War", author: Tinghai Moyu, and is published with authorization from 36Kr.