A view of Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/IC]

An entrepreneurship contest designed for young college students nationwide was launched in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province on May 22.

College students who are born after Jan 1, 1982 from home and abroad and possess no less than 30 percent of a startup's shares are eligible to sign up for the contest.

This year, the contest will comprise four sections: smart life, intelligent manufacturing, intelligent equipment and rural revitalization.

From June to October, the organizing committee is set to travel to cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Xi'an, Jinan, Changsha, Fuzhou, Qingdao and Dalian to solicit entrepreneurship projects.

After an evaluation by experts, five projects will be selected to compete in the final, which is slated to be held in 2022.

The contest, which has been held in Ningbo for five years in a row, has grown to become an influential platform incubating innovation talents and enterprises with market prospects.

A total of 166,000 college graduates sought employment or started businesses in the city in 2020, a year-on-year growth of 20.3 percent. More than 10,000 of these graduates held a master's degree or above, official statistics show.

Ningbo was ranked ninth in China in terms of attractiveness to talents in 2020, 13 spots higher than the previous year, according to a report recently published by Ren Zeping, former chief economist of Chinese property developer Evergrande, and Zhilian Recruitment, a major Chinese recruitment website.