Qingdao in Shandong province launched a youth start-up base in the city's west coast on April 14, in an effort to help young graduates become successful entrepreneurs.

The area has been designed to cater for 130,000 young entrepreneurs and will provide them with an environment to foster their business as well as high-quality professional services.

The 2,000-square-meter youth start-up base in the West Coast New District is the first non-profit entrepreneurial platform for college students as well as the only provincial base supported by colleges and universities.

The district also announced the opening of an innovative and entrepreneurship competition, which has attracted 50 projects, participating across four categories. The organization committee will offer subsidies of 200,000 yuan ($31,000) for the top three in each category and 100,000 yuan for those ranked fourth to tenth. More than 20 domestic venture capital institutions also took part in the event to find potential investees.

Since the launch of the competition last year, a group of start-ups with new technologies and new business models have sprung up, contributing to a favorable, open, sustainable environment for young business people, said the competition organizer.

According to statistics, in 2015, 21 projects received investment and more than 80 entrepreneurship featured events held, attracting over 6,000 entrepreneurs. Also, 27 programs were selected into the “Dark Horse West Coast” entrepreneurship training camp, and five into the final stage of the dark horse competition, China's largest contest for innovative developing enterprises to connect with potential venture capital investment, and 13 into various above-city-level national entrepreneurship competitions.