Innovation and technology next big step in SAR’s development

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has accelerated the process of embracing a new era of innovation and technology backed by favorable policies, industry insiders said when looking back on the past 25 years.

Zhang Zhaoxiang, executive director of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Hong Kong Institute of Science and Innovation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that “with the clear support of the country’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) for the development of Hong Kong as an international hub for innovation and technology, and the tremendous opportunities brought about by the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Hong Kong’s path to innovation and technology development will be promising.”

“Backed by Hong Kong’s rich technological resources and its status as a world-class technology center, enterprises in the city should set a global vision, make full use of Hong Kong’s own advantages of internationalization, actively embrace the support and policies provided by the central government, and integrate into the overall situation of the nation to embrace a longer-term development prospect,” he added.

In the past five years, the HKSAR has unprecedentedly invested over HK$150 billion ($19.11 billion) to support I&T development, and set up the “InnoHK Research Clusters” initiative with more than HK$20 billion to further promote the development of life science and artificial intelligence and robotics, the strategic fields in which Hong Kong enjoys clear advantages.

The Hong Kong Science Park and Cyberport are two major facilities in the SAR to grow innovation and high-technology startups. During the past decades, the Hong Kong Science Park has incubated around 1,100 startups and tech ventures from 24 countries and regions, accounting for nearly 30 percent of total startups in the city. Among them, three unicorns have emerged — intelligent manufacturing technology company SmartMore, smart logistics firm Lalamove and AI giant SenseTime, which was launched at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Shang Hailong, general manager of SenseTime Hong Kong, said that the current Partnership Research Programme is one of the most efficient government initiatives to boost collaboration between private enterprises and Hong Kong universities. “It breaks barriers to some extent between a research achievement and a value-added intellectual property,” he said.

Funding programs involved in industry-universities collaboration play a particularly significant role when opportunities in the technology and innovation sector arise, Shang said.

For instance, with the blueprint of the Greater Bay Area putting land scale and funding programs in place, the close collaboration between industries and universities identified in the programs can help speed up innovation and create a technology boom in the region, he added.

Shang said the new-term government has already laid out forwardlooking strategies for the next step in the development of the innovation and technology sector with the revamping of the Innovation and Technology Bureau into the Innovation, Technology and Industry Bureau, which will take effect on Friday.

The bureau has hinted that the government will put more emphasis on the advanced manufacturing sector, as well as encourage private enterprises to commercialize scientific results, he said.