“Nanjing has for the first time entered the phase of an ‘aged-society’, and the city’s burden of looking after both the young and the old is getting greater,” Zhao Jun, deputy director of the local statistics bureau, said last year. The burden of social support and caregiving will face “steep growth” until 2050, he warned.

Hence Nanjing’s desire to boost its population of educated under-40s such as Tan. It is not alone: last year, more than 20 Chinese cities – including fellow second-tier cities such as Chengdu, Tianjin and Xi’an – rolled out “talent programmes” offering a wide range of incentives to university-educated people under 40 who were willing to relocate.

In Nanjing’s favour is its desirable location in the Yangtze River Delta megaregion (YRD), an economic zone of cities including Shanghai and Hangzhou that the central government wants to strategically cluster by improving infrastructure and business connections. The YRD was set up in 2015 at the same time as the Pearl River Delta megaregion, which includes Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Hong Kong, and the Jing-Jin-Ji megaregion around Beijing.

The YRD is home to 80 million people (around 11% of China’s population) and contributes nearly 20% of the country’s total economic output, with an annual GDP of $1.5tn, roughly equivalent to that of Russia.

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