On the initiative of Holger Haldenwang (Dean of the Business School) and after various preliminary discussions with Ms. Maren Petry, National Senior Director Innovation at the German Chamber of Commerce in South & Southwest China, 20 representatives of 9 companies were invited to SZTU on June 15 for an intensive exchange of ideas.

The participants representing world market leaders in their niches like Herrenknecht and Wuerth, but also so called hidden champions to which Germany is well known and has a lot of like MaxMore, GLOBE precision, Rehm Thermal Systems, BOCK China, FAYTECH, Groz-Beckert.

Retaining and especially recruiting staff is a continuous and growing business challenge for companies and in particular for German companies in China.

The task of the chamber is to support with a number of services and events their members. The AHK Greater Chamber is divided in three areas with different headquarters in North China (Beijing), East China (Shanghai) and South and Southwest China (Guangzhou). Altogether the AHK Greater China has around 3000 members. The need to adapt to China speed in regard to product development, digitization and future technologies are increasing the need of qualified staff like engineers, coders, data scientist and future managers of innovation related jobs. That's the reason why the Chamber is very curious and interested to work together with the SZTU with the special focus on the employability of the students.

In order to be able to better assess the possibilities, skills and abilities, seven colleges were each briefly introduced by their deans, after President Ruan first in his welcome address to the participants explained SZTU as a whole, its development and strategy modeled on the German university system of applied sciences.

As all of the SZTU students have to make internships in companies one of the very intensively discussed topics in this meeting was the last, organization, administration and salary as well as how to convince the students to accept a job after their graduation.

Beside of the internships the intensive debate led by host Holger Haldenwang on various opportunities for collaboration, the 20 guests were shown several laboratories in the colleges of New Materials and new Energy, Creative Design, Intelligent Manufacturing and Transportation and Logistics. The guests were very impressed by the equipment available in the labs. A statement from one attendee makes this clear: "Many a manufacturing company would be lucky to have this equipment."

The participants unanimously and emphatically emphasized that they found the meeting very successful, that they are interested in a close cooperation with SZTU and that they will intensify the contacts in individual visits as soon as possible.

On the part of the AHK China it was again emphasized that the cooperation between the AHK China and the SZTU would like to be established as soon as possible in the form of a cooperation agreement.

Content: Holger Haldenwang