Bay Area scholars call for cooperation
Scientists and educators in Hong Kong and Macao expressed high expectations for cross-boundary cooperation in research, innovation and nurturing talent, as the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area entered a new development phase.
They made the remarks the day after the release of a development outline for the area. The outline encourages the region’s educational institutions to strengthen collaboration in scientific research and talent exchanges, with the aim of turning the region into an education and talent hub.
The plan will strengthen Hong Kong’s role in the region’s science and technology development and facilitate the channeling of more talent and resources from the city into innovation-driven development, leading Hong Kong scientist Nancy Ip Yuk-yu said.
Ip, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told China Daily that she believes more specific measures and cooperative mechanisms in science and technology will be rolled out.
The Greater Bay Area development plan will coordinate and optimize sci-tech resources across the 11-city cluster and stimulate crossboundary cooperation for scientific innovation and breakthroughs, she said.
Universities and research institutes in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will be more proactive in participating in the country’s innovation and technology development, said Ip, who is also vice-president for Research and Graduate Studies at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Dennis Lo Yuk-ming, associate dean for research on the Faculty of Medicine at Chinese University of Hong Kong, said that with the support of the bay area, universities in Hong Kong will be able to access more resources and share with partner institutions on the Chinese mainland. Lo looked forward to the possibility of carrying out large-scale joint research programs with counterparts in the region.
The development outline supports researchers in studying and formulating plans for cross-border use of medical data and biological samples, such as blood, necessary for cooperative research. Lo, a chemical pathology expert, welcomed the policy and said he looks forward to its implementation with more concrete measures.
By sharing DNA samples and genetic data across boundaries, scientists will be able to overcome existing limitations and push research forward in the field, Lo said.
Yeh Gar-on, a senior urban planner and a senior professor in Hong Kong University’s Department of Urban Planning and Design, said the plan offers new opportunities for technological collaboration between Hong Kong and the mainland.
He said that Hong Kong’s scientific institutions, which have extensive international connections, play a leading role in research fields such as biotechnology and chemistry.
He said that to transform the Greater Bay Area into an innovation and technology hub, more cities have ramped up their efforts, including Dongguan, a manufacturing powerhouse that’s focused on a tech-driven economy.
Yeh also encouraged Hong Kong’s scientific institutions to strengthen collaboration with mainland enterprises to help commercialize scientific outcomes and suggested that Hong Kong invest more in research and development to seize opportunities offered by the Greater Bay Area, as well as in a series of efforts by the central government to boost the city’s technological development.
In a statement issued after the bay area’s development outline was unveiled, the University of Hong Kong said the promulgation of the plan will offer opportunities for the university to scale up and expand the scope of education and research.
With the aim of turning the region into a world-class knowledge powerhouse, the university believes the plan will promote academic and business collaboration in the region, the statement said. It will also provide a richer and more diverse learning experience for students, it said.
The university has established a cross-disciplinary task force to explore education and research opportunities and will hold discussions with stakeholders in the region, including government officials, educators and researchers.
Yao Jingming, head of the University of Macau’s Department of Portuguese, said cross-boundary educational cooperation will contribute to the cultivation of bilingual people who are proficient in Chinese and Portuguese. In turn, that will help the Macao SAR play its role in promoting economic cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries, Yao said.
China’s shrinking working-age population should not cause alarm, experts said, after figures released recently by the National Bureau of Statistics showed declines in the number of workers over seven consecutive years.
Both the absolute number and the relative proportion of the working-age population — those 16 to 59 years of age — have been dropping. Last year there were 897 million people in China in that age group, down by 26 million from the peak in 2011.
It is generally believed that China’s economic juggernaut over several decades was fueled by an abundant supply of labor generated by the baby boom of the 1950s.
Those babies matured into adults in the 1980s, coinciding with a series of economic reforms that created plenty of employment opportunities, and with the enforcement of the family planning policy, which reduced the child-rearing burden for workers, said He Dan, director of the China Population and Development Research Center.
Those factors have gradually lost traction. The one-child limit was scrapped in recent years as the labor pool appeared to be shrinking.
Demographers focused on a potential shortage of working-age people, which could drag down economic growth in the coming decades.
Anxiety was heightened by bleak projections from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the United Nations, both of which forecast that the decline will persist, with the working age population dropping to around 700 million by 2050.
But some demographers and economists said the prevailing anxiety over the shrinking workforce is exaggerated.
Zhai Zhenwu, president of the China Population Association, said the sheer volume of the workforce in China is equivalent to that of all developed countries combined, and “currently, no labor shortage is in sight”.
“Workforce declines can be offset with improved productivity,” he said. “China’s economy is mainly driven by labor-intensive industries, rather than the high-tech sector. Through science and technological innovation, the country can scale back its dependence on workforce volume.”
Future productivity increases will be made possible through greater numbers of well-educated college graduates and sufficiently trained technicians entering the labor market each year, said Ning Jizhe, head of the National Bureau of Statistics.
“The number of those having received higher education or technical training has surpassed 170 million, and we see more than 8 million new college graduates each year,” Ning said at a news conference in July. “The higher proportion of this talent in the labor market will play a greater role in upgrading the country’s industry and maintaining steady growth.”
China saw about 8.2 million students graduate from college last year, compared with 6.3 million in 2010.
But Ning also acknowledged an inadequate supply of technicians, skilled workers and talent to supply emerging industries, which he described as “structural issues afflicting the employment market in both coastal regions and inland areas in central and western parts of China”.
According to a tentative report, or green paper, on population and labor in China published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in January, a diminishing number of migrant workers from rural areas in 2003 was an initial sign of labor strain.
The downward trajectory gradually affected a wider range of labor-intensive sectors, such as catering and housekeeping services, as well as the conventional agricultural industry, said Li Tongping, a population economist with China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, Hubei province.
“It is vital to keep calm when confronted with the ongoing workforce shift,” he said. “The heightened anxiety is likely to originate from the unusually rapid pace of change taking place in China.”
Workforce volume is closely linked to fertility rates and the elderly population, he said.
The proportion of China’s population aged 60 and above will expand to 20 percent of the total by 2025, according to estimates by the United Nations Population Fund.
China completed its transition from high fertility and high death rates to low levels of both in 40 years, while in developed economies it took about 100 years, leading population researchers said.
Though the speed and scale of China’s population shift and the subsequent changes in workforce volume are unprecedented, Li said, the change still fits the universal trajectory of population development.
Babatunde Ahonsi, United Nations Population Fund representative in China, said the linchpin of a country’s economy is labor productivity rather than the size of its workforce.
“With well-coordinated actions from the government, the private sector and civil organizations, China will continue to be a key driver of sustainable development,” he said.
He said he appreciated China’s efforts in boosting job skills, improving healthcare and pension systems and pushing for an innovation-driven economy.
More actions are needed though, he said, starting with a gradual increase in the retirement age and an equal retirement age for men and women, along with concerted efforts to develop the “silver economy” that caters to the healthcare, learning, mobility, leisure and financial service demands of senior citizens. The retirement age for Chinese women ranges from 50 to 55, and most men retire at about 60.
“Second, measures should be taken to support members of the younger generation who choose to have more children,” Ahonsi added.
He suggested policymakers consider introducing weighted tax reductions, child-care subsidies, and affordable quality care for children and the elderly so as to empower women and promote equality in the sharing of household work between men and women.