The Ningbo government has opened applications to this year’s 3315 program which seeks to attract foreign “high end” entrepreneur teams. It looks like a program designed to attract the world’s top talents in areas such as new materials, information technology, energy, marine technology, environment protection, services, and life science.
Applicants will be a team of at least 5 people. All members must have good moral traits and professional integrity. The team leader will be younger than 55 with a PhD, and be more than an associate professor at a famous college or scientific research institution (or have a senior position in a world-famous company for at least three years). Each team member must have at least a Masters degree and and excellent capabilities in their field. The team will invest no less than usd$800,000 with the team leader personally investing no less than $150,000.
The team will sign a 5 year labour contract with a local Ningbo institution such as a university, hospital, research institution, etc. The team leader and at least half the team must remain in Ningbo 9 months out of the year, the rest have to be in Ningbo at least 6 months a year.
The good news is if anyone on the team has won a Nobel Prize, Turing Award, Fields Medal Prize, or a similar international award, or if they are world famous scholar working for a global top level university in a developed countries…… the Ningbo Government might make some exceptions.
If anyone is interested, you have to apply online by April 30th. The Ningbo government has involved nearly every government department in the selection process, the applicants will be asked numerous questions and must submit to several inquiries and document requests over several months. In late September the results will be announced.
Nottingham China 
[…] Around 2015 we started talking to sludge producing companies and governments to understand the market. This was very difficult as the Chinese companies who produce sludge are almost certainly dumping it, so they preferred not to talk to us and pretend there wasn’t any problem at all. The governments were much more helpful, at some points they almost seemed desperate for a solution. Winter 2016 we started pitching to VC, quickly realizing none of them had any interest or knew anything about sludge, environmental problems, or engineering startups in general. Sometimes there is a disconnect between the big problems governments want to solve and the startups seed investors are interested in. […]