Internationality vital to inno-tech hub status

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding with Boston Children’s Hospital — a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital — the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Stanford University School of Medicine and University College London on the joint establishment of the Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Hong Kong. Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor was on hand to congratulate all parties concerned on the latest milestone in such multilateral cooperation, which for sure will boost Hong Kong’s efforts to establish itself as an advanced innovation-technology hub.

Wednesday’s event followed the signing of collaboration agreements between HKUST and the Guangzhou Municipal People’s Government and Guangzhou University regarding the establishment of the HKUST (Guangzhou) on Dec 21 last year. The collaboration agreements with the Guangzhou government and Guangzhou University are particularly important because it is an important step forward in the collaboration on science and technology in the GuangdongHong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Hong Kong boasts a few of the best universities in the world that attract many accomplished academics and researchers as well as students from around the world, with numerous internationally recognized academic achievements to boot over the years. Many of the best mainland-based universities maintain academic exchanges with their Hong Kong counterparts for mutually beneficial research and development projects in addition to academic cooperation, because it is another way for mainland institutions of higher learning to reach out to the rest of the world beside direct exchanges with their foreign colleagues.

That is why the central government has always encouraged such cooperation among mainland, Hong Kong and foreign institutions of inno-tech development. Such support has been redoubled in recent years since President Xi Jinping personally replied to a letter signed by 24 Hong Kong-based academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2017 expressing their strong desire to contribute more to the country’s science and technology development.

With the country fast becoming a major sci-tech power after rising to the second-largest economy in the world, it is only natural for Hong Kong to integrate its own development into the nation’s overall development strategy in all aspects of socio-economic progress for its own sake and the nation’s.