Guangdong establishes itself as IC industrial cluster

Guangdong's provincial government has made extraordinary efforts to expand its talent pool for integrated circuits industrial development in recent years, providing robust support for the southern province to establish itself as one of the three major IC industrial clusters in the country.

Wu Yanling, an inspector with the province's education department, said the department has guided eight universities, including the prestigious Sun Yat-sen University, to take the lead in the country in establishing a provincial industry-education collaborative innovation platform for the integrated circuit industry, increasing the number of undergraduate integrated circuit majors to 23, up from 7 in the same period of 2022.

"Guangdong, a global production base, now has more than 10,000 undergraduate, master's, and doctoral students majoring in IC and related fields," said Wu, adding that the figure has quadrupled the 2022 number.

The inspector went on to praise Guangdong's efforts to nurture and cultivate AI talent with application scenarios and its construction of future learning centers at six universities, including South China University of Technology.

She highlighted the province's construction of 348 modern industrial colleges in 51 undergraduate universities, with a total of 214,000 undergraduate, master's, and doctoral students nurtured in recent years.

Meanwhile, universities and colleges in the province have opened more than 400 new majors, covering robotics, artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, low altitude technology, engineering, and high-end equipment manufacturing to nurture talents to support its economic construction and achieve high-quality development, she added.