The conventional perception is that townships often struggle to attract talent due to relatively scarce industrial resources and limited development space. However, the Metallurgical Industrial Park (Jinfeng Town), located in the northern part of Zhangjiagang, has become a prolific source of talent, delivering an impressive "report card"—this year, the Park (Town) saw 18 national-level talents recognized, along with 12 provincial Double Innovation Talents and Suzhou Leading Talents, setting a new historical record, with the number of talents receiving municipal-level honors and above in Zhangjiagang ranking first in the city.

This success is no accident; looking back at the development path of the Park (Town), it becomes clear that the rise of this land has always been closely linked to talent. Riding the spring breeze of reform and opening-up, a group of metallurgy professionals ignited the roaring flames in the furnaces, tempering rock-solid steel and forging the Park (Town) into a "Steel City stretching ten li," establishing its status as an industrial heavyweight.

Entering the stage of high-quality development, the Park (Town) boldly stepped out of its former "comfort zone," adopting a more open posture and a clearer strategy to focus on talent attraction and cultivation, while strategically expanding industries like new materials, new energy, and new medical sectors, advancing towards becoming an innovation-driven town brimming with vitality and rich resources.

The recent conclusion of the 2025 Jiangsu China Talent Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition (Domestic Tournament) saw the "Next-Generation High-Efficiency Nanoparticle and Cell Manipulation Equipment" project from Suzhou Obino Biotechnology Co., Ltd. win first prize in the biomedicine and high-end medical equipment track.

The outstanding performance of this talent enterprise's scientific research achievements in the competition provides a boost for the Park (Town)'s distinctive new medical industry as it moves towards the high-end segment. Behind this lies the Park (Town)'s relentless efforts in meticulously attracting and cultivating talent, guided by the principle of industry-talent integration.

Here, talent is drawn by the industry. In the exhibition hall of Xuanyu Medical Device (Suzhou) Co., Ltd., a roughly half-meter-long rubber tube connected to a handle is on display. This peculiarly shaped rubber tube, named a single-use cardiac pulsed electric field ablation catheter, is the world's latest medical consumable for the interventional treatment of tachyarrhythmias (paroxysmal atrial fibrillation).

Xuanyu Medical, which holds this globally leading technological achievement and is headquartered in Shanghai, chose to establish a production base in the Park (Town), precisely because of its solid industrial foundation and supporting facilities. "The medical device industry in the Park (Town) started early and developed rapidly, having already formed a industrial cluster of a certain scale. Here, we can not only find partners but also more easily access support services like testing and sterilization," stated Plant Manager Liu Kanqiang directly, noting that based on experience, only regions where biomedicine and medical device enterprises cluster will have supporting enterprises offering corresponding services.

As the company assessed, Suzhou Jieying Medical Technology Co., Ltd., established in the Park (Town) in 2022, is a third-party service enterprise providing ethylene oxide sterilization for medical devices. After Xuanyu Medical settled there, it established cooperation with them.

Here, industries thrive because of talent. Tiyi Technology (Jiangsu) Co., Ltd. is a talent enterprise primarily engaged in the R&D and production of nickel-titanium shape memory alloy materials. This metal material boasts excellent mechanical properties, fatigue performance, and thermal stability, and can generate power through deformation when electrified, replacing traditional motors and servos. Consequently, it is widely used in digital products and precision medical devices. However, due to its special composition ratio and complex manufacturing process, the product relied on imports for a long time.

Leveraging industry-university-research cooperation with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tiyi Technology overcame this "bottleneck" technology, establishing a complete industrial chain from smelting to wire processing, and further to providing application solutions. Currently, the company has passed international SMA material verification and signed an R&D technical service contract with a leading domestic mobile phone manufacturing supporting supplier.

The settlement of this enterprise truly achieves the goal of introducing one talent project, bringing in one innovation team, and forming one industrial chain. This not only benefits the growth and expansion of the new materials industry but also its technological advantages provide strong support for innovation breakthroughs in the new medical industry.

Just as water accumulates to gather fish and trees flourish to attract birds, the mutual attraction between industry and talent is inseparable from the industrial foundation solidified by the Park (Town)'s focus on project introduction and cultivation, and the acceleration of project construction.

Anchored in the three leading industries of "new materials, new medicine, new energy" along with multiple emerging and future industries, the Park (Town) has attracted a group of "chain master" enterprises and leading enterprises with high industrialization levels, good economic benefits, and strong driving capabilities through methods like capital investment attraction, stationed investment promotion, and platform-based investment promotion, forming the "fundamental base" of its industry.

This year, the Park (Town) has further increased its efforts in project attraction, maintaining a "always on the road" proactive stance, tirelessly conducting industry promotions, enterprise matchmaking, and project negotiations. Relying on its complete supporting facilities and high-quality services, it has won recognition from numerous high-quality enterprises. As of November, the Park (Town) has signed and landed 38 projects each with investment exceeding 100 million yuan, including Baijielisi Functional Soy Protein, Zhiyuan Magnetic Levitation Waste Heat Utilization, and Fulongjie Hydrogen Energy Equipment Manufacturing, with a cumulative total investment of over 8 billion yuan.

While project attraction has borne fruitful results, project construction is also accelerating. This year, the Park (Town) introduced documents such as the "Full-Process Service Guide for Major Projects," coordinating comprehensively to resolve issues like application approval and pushing forward the orderly progress of 37 major projects at three levels with a total investment of 51.55 billion yuan. Among these, 22 newly started projects, including Jinhheng Aoda New Energy Intelligent Equipment and Shayin High-End Fiber Intelligent Manufacturing, have all commenced construction, while 17 projects, including Guoxin Shazhou and Posco Plate, have been completed and put into operation. The investment completion rate for major projects ranked first in the city.

Relying on the decisive placement of these projects and the formation and expansion of the "3+N" industrial landscape, the Park (Town) has analyzed its own industrial strengths and weaknesses, creating a "talent handbook" based on industrial needs to achieve targeted and precise talent recruitment.

Suzhou Surui Medical Technology Co., Ltd. is an innovative medical device enterprise focusing on the field of assisted reproduction, dedicated to the research, development, and commercialization of technologies for the detection and treatment of azoospermia. Its self-developed in vitro diagnostic kit and in vitro spermatogenesis treatment products for azoospermia have entered the clinical trial stage.

Recognizing that the project's innovative technology was highly "aligned" with the Park (Town)'s vigorously developing innovative medical device industry direction, the investment attraction team actively engaged with the enterprise, guiding the project to first receive recognition through the Suzhou Innovation and Entrepreneurship Leading Talent (Pre-settlement) Special Program and the Zhangjiagang Leading Talent (Pre-settlement) Key Category A, thereby facilitating a mutual cooperation intent. After the project landed, it participated in the 10th "Innovation Jiangsu" Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition and won first prize.

Currently, the company's laboratory has been completed, decorated, and put into use, with R&D work proceeding in an orderly manner. Looking at the advanced equipment and busy R&D personnel in the laboratory, Yang Ying, the company's Deputy General Manager, is full of expectation: "We will continue to advance the R&D and transformation of new technologies and products, steadily obtain relevant product registration certificates on a compliant basis, and accelerate the industrialization process."

Talent is the foundation of innovation, determining the height of an industry, and its importance is self-evident. However, talent is more like a seed; to root it in the fertile soil of industry and grow a denser industrial forest, one must pay attention to their practical needs and nurture them with thoughtful services.

"Planting the parasol tree" is the primary condition for retaining and effectively utilizing talent. Taking the medical device industry as an example, the Park (Town) leverages its inherent advantage of clustering orthopedic medical device enterprises by building and developing the Zhangjiagang Medical Device High-Tech Industrial Park, with Maidi Medical Device Innovation Port and Yangtze River New Medical Innovation Park as its two main carriers. It has introduced over 110实体 medical device enterprises and 190 medical trade enterprises, accompanied by supporting service platforms including a medical device innovation R&D center, achievement transformation center, testing center, public experimental platform, and CRO (Contract Research Organization) platform.

Yang Wenzhu, General Manager of Maidike Medical Technology (Jiangsu) Co., Ltd., remarked that working in medical devices is a race against time; if a company's technology R&D and product registration are fast, it can seize the developmental initiative. "The Park (Town) has a professional medical device registration service platform that can help us shorten the application time for registration certificates significantly."

After establishing carrier spaces to "gather" talent together, it is also essential to build bridges to achieve resource synergy. In September, the Park (Town)'s "New Medical+" New Medical Industry Chain New Social Stratum Association held its first member conference, marking the formal establishment of the city's first district/township-level industrial chain new social stratum association. This signifies the Park (Town)'s new medical industry is entering a new stage of "collaborative creation, ecological co-building, and mutual success," bringing together the strengths of government, industry, academia, research, and finance.

In addition to such "inclusive" services, the Park (Town) also provides "customized" services to help talent solve practical development challenges.

At Volmann Technology Zhangjiagang Co., Ltd., rows of wax patterns are dipped into coating, sprinkled with refractory sand, dried and cured before demolding, and then filled with nickel alloy for casting, forming turbine blades shaped remarkably like gears. These blades are only 1-2 mm thick yet can withstand high temperatures, finding wide application in the automotive and aerospace industries.

Relying on its robust core technology, the enterprise developed rapidly and conceived the idea of increasing investment, expanding production, and extending the industrial chain. Upon learning of the enterprise's needs, the Park (Town)'s investment promotion team promptly assisted in coordination, finding suitable space. They made available 4,000 square meters of factory space nearby within the enterprise's current industrial park for production scale expansion, while simultaneously constructing a new 3-story, 5,000-square-meter factory building for the enterprise to deploy an automated production line for precision machining of high-temperature alloy components, thereby enhancing product added value.

By introducing "well-matched" talent according to industrial needs and creating a "conducive" industrial environment focused on talent requirements, the Park (Town), through this deliberate and methodical development approach, has increasingly tightened the bond between industry and talent. It is steadfastly carving out a path of industrial transformation and development suited to itself, thereby creating greater advantages for future high-quality development.