Talents are Hong Kong’s best assets
Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuetngor said on Tuesday the special administrative region government will continue to invest in education to nurture talents in Hong Kong. She was responding to media questions ahead of an Executive Council meeting on the city slipping a few places in the latest IMD World Talent Ranking. The CE added that she was not too worried about the drop in the ranking, noting that the government has rolled out quite a few specific measures on nurturing talents.
Hong Kong stands at 18th place in the World Talent Ranking this year, down from 12th last year. Singapore remains in 13th place as last year and is now the highest placed Asian economy; while the Chinese mainland rose from 40th to 39th this year. However, it should be noted the ranking only reflects the view of the IMD and is not the only benchmark. It is not meant to influence the decision-making process of each economy on the list. That is why Lam said she is not overly concerned about Hong Kong’s placing, not because talents are unimportant.
Incidentally, the City University of Hong Kong has just released its 2018 general analysis and outlook report on innovation and technology development in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, in which the CityU concludes quality talents will be crucial to Hong Kong’s future success as a major player in Bay Area development. In fact, this is a common understanding among all regional economies in the Bay Area and why Hong Kong attaches so much importance to nurturing talents in all disciplines, in addition to the nation’s persistent emphasis on education.
Lam also explained to reporters on Tuesday that “spending on education is the best investment that the government could make because it will nurture talents to meet the needs of the economy in future. So we’ll continue to invest in education”. We are confident the SAR government will continue with all efforts necessary to improve Hong Kong’s education system to facilitate the city’s future development. To do so, it will not only increase spending on education but also upgrade the technical aspects of school education progressively to keep it up to date and beneficial.
Needless to say education is the most important and reliable way to ensure future supply of quality talents for Hong Kong, but nurturing local talents alone is not enough to satisfy the SAR’s need for world-class specialists to work in its burgeoning inno-tech industry. The SAR government has set the goal of making the inno-tech sector a new growth engine for Hong Kong’s economy, which is no easy task by any standard. After all, Hong Kong is not the only regional economy reaching for the top in inno-tech development. It needs to attract high-caliber talents from around the world as best it can. This is because others are doing the same and competition is intense to say the least.
It is no secret that Hong Kong has some key issues to fix in that respect, not least extraordinarily high housing costs.