Taiwan students wrap up mainland internships

Forty Taiwan students who studied at universities on the Chinese mainland have wrapped up their summer internships at companies in Shanghai through the "Starry Plan" initiated by Fudan University.

Besides offering internships in fields including design, retail and finance, the recently launched program provided students with lectures on career planning, interview skills and consultations given by practitioners from companies, as well as cultural and social experience tours in Shanghai to familiarize them with the mainland's working environment.

"The project aims to foster the career development of Taiwan students by integrating social resources," Chen Zhimin, vice-president of Fudan University, said at the program's closing ceremony, which was held in Shanghai on Sunday.

"We hope the program will attract more Taiwan students in the future, build a bridge for cross-Straits youth communication and pave a sound foundation to facilitate more students from Taiwan to have their internships in Shanghai in the post-COVID era."

Yin Pinyu, a fresh graduate in English from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, said she joined the program because of the potential job opportunities in top firms included in it, such as French advertising and public relations company Publicis Groupe and innovation-driven consumer group Fosun International.

"I hoped to find a job through the platform," she said.

She achieved that goal when she became one of two participants to secure jobs in Shanghai and started working in advertisement execution at Publicis.

"I might have missed the chance to pursue a career in advertising without hearing professional expertise shared by experts from the industry in lectures during the internship," Yin said.

"It inspired my interest in advertising when I understood the essence of advertising is similar to marketing－an area I used to consider as my career preference－in the way that consumer wants and needs are the drivers of strategies.

"I'm grateful for the opportunity given by the program."

Lo Hsiao-wen, who studied financial management at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, said she gained knowledge of domestic market and industry research methods through her internship at Fusi Capital, a domestic equity investment group focusing on education, healthcare and emerging industries.

Lo said one of the company's partners offered her and other interns a detailed lecture on investment at the start of the program, which "laid a solid foundation for her internship".

"It's a productive experience where I learned to collect data online, conduct industry research, and analyze data based on aspects such as company value, business models and market policy analysis, before doing a final report," she said.

"With the help of professionals in the firm, I grew from a rookie who had limited knowledge about industry research to a role where I was able to do reports independently and select effective information from a large amount of data.

"It's a valuable experience working in the primary market; absolutely inspiring for my future career planning."

Shen Guolin, director of Fudan University's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan affairs office, said the program will include more training camps to provide a platform for better communication between students from Taiwan and the mainland.

More training camps and corporate courses will be added to the program to improve the students' competitiveness in the workplace, Shen added.