Across China: Competition in SW China's Chongqing inspires students to innovate, start businesses

This photo taken on April 9, 2023 shows the site of the final of the eighth China International College Students' "Internet+" Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition in southwest China's Chongqing. (Xinhua/Liu Chan)

CHONGQING, April 11 (Xinhua) -- During the final of the eighth China International College Students' "Internet+" Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, six top-notch teams presented their research results in various cutting-edge fields, including Artificial Intelligence, digital twin and computational imaging.

The teams were all made up of college students from home and abroad. Held on April 9, this year's competition was also the first Global Entrepreneurship Forum for College Students.

Since this year's competition was initiated in April 2022, a total of 14.5 million students from 4,554 colleges in 111 countries and regions signed up for the event, submitting 3.4 million research projects. It was the first time this competition managed to draw over 10 million participants.

After stringent selection and evaluation, four Chinese teams and two foreign teams reached the final. After fierce competition and intriguing presentations of their projects, students from Nanjing University of Science and Technology won the championship for their creative research named Light and Shadow -- Pioneer of Billion Pixel Infrared Intelligent Computational Imaging.

"The era of information and intelligence is knocking at our door. Chinese youngsters need to shoulder their responsibilities to grasp the opportunities of innovation and entrepreneurship and challenge themselves to make new breakthroughs," said Wang Bowen, member of the champion team.

The concurrent forum on entrepreneurship also invited renowned entrepreneurs and participants from the previous editions of the competition to discuss the shared future of college students from a global perspective.

During the forum, William Orbell, a British graduate of Oxford University who is now studying at Tsinghua University in China for further education, shared his feelings about the event with the attendees.

He reached the final of the seventh China International College Students' "Internet+" Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition together with the South China University of Technology. Their project was centered on a carbon-free energy carrier, ammonia. According to the Green Ammonia Energy Storage System that his team developed, ammonia can meet the market need for cost-effective, long-term and large-scale energy storage, helping provide a practical and cost-effective solution to hydrogen storage and distribution.

The competition was a life-changing experience for Orbell. "Taking part in this competition helped me to discover what innovation really means," he said.

"Innovation is much more than just discovering something that no one else has thought of before. Innovation is about taking skills and knowledge from academic studies and applying them in a real-world context, using your imagination to create a product or service that will make an impact on people's lives," Orbell added.

The competition, first held in 2015, has thus far invited about 9.43 million teams featuring 39.83 million college students, aiming to encourage and inspire the students to innovate and start their own businesses. The ninth edition of the event is scheduled to be held in north China's Tianjin Municipality.