The Championship of the 8th China International College Students' "Internet+" Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition (the "Competition") will kick off on April 9 in Chongqing City, Southwest China. The Competition Championship and concurrent activities will be hosted by Chongqing University.
The Competition has been held for eight years since it was inaugurated in 2015, with the participation of nearly 39.83 million students. The number of participants continues to increase year after year.
As an essential starting point for deepening education of innovation and entrepreneurship, the Competition plays a vital role in college students' overall development and industry-university-research integration.
The 8th Competition is a very good combination of education, science and technology, and talents. It is a powerful initiative to implement the latest deployment of China's central government, gathering talents in an efficient way.
The first Competition, with the theme of "Realizing Dreams through 'Internet+' and Pursuing a Bright Future through Innovation and Entrepreneurship", was organized by Jilin University in Northeast China in 2015. The Competition has three levels: school level, provincial level, and national level. The former Competitions consisted of projects of four categories: "Internet+" traditional industry, "Internet+" new business, "Internet+" public service, and "Internet+" technical support platform. In this year's Competition, the projects have been broadened to New Engineering, New Medicine, New Agriculture, and New Liberal Arts.
With the first International Track launched in 2017, the Competition has attracted nearly 10,000 international startup projects from more than 120 countries and regions.
The track classification of "higher education, vocational education, and budding (middle school students)" which was added in the 5th Competition, continues, with the Youth Dream and industrial tracks included.
In the 6th Competition, the event was officially renamed China International College Students' "Internet+" Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, with "Dare to differ, Dare to Win" as its theme. Since then, both the name and the theme have been kept in use up to date.
The Competition has attracted students from some of the world's top 100 universities, with more focus on talent education and creativity since 2021. A new "Undergraduate Creativity Group", a separate promotion channel, has been set up to ensure more in-depth participation of college students.
This year's Competition attracted a record number of 4,554 colleges from 111 countries and regions. Compared with last year, both the number of overseas projects and the number of participants increased. Top universities such as Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London have set up teams to sign up for the Competition.