TECH TALENT DEVELOPMENT IN FOCUS
Summit hears of top global universities’ plans for collaboration with Greater Bay Area institutions
Top universities from around the world are considering collaborations with research and education institutions in Hong Kong and the rest of the Greater Bay Area, with a strong focus on the development of innovation and technology (I&T) talent.
Tony Chan Fan-cheong, president of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), yesterday said his university had set up an innovation centre in Shenzhen a few months ago as part of the “strategic plan of KAUST”.
“The idea is to bring the KAUST people of Saudi Arabia to Shenzhen to learn about the ecosystem – you cannot teach this on paper, you have to go there,” he said.
“And hopefully they will bring something back to grow the ecosystem.”
Chan, a former president of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the decision was well-received and KAUST had built partnerships with several institutions, including Shenzhen’s Tsing Hua University research institute and graduate school.
“In the next 10 years, where will be the major centres for science and technology?” he asked. “US and China. We are in the Middle East or West Asia, and we’ve got to hedge our bets, we’ve got to be invested.”
Chan added that many Saudis could speak fluent Chinese and said the country’s high schools were required to teach two hours of Chinese a week.
He was speaking as university presidents gathered for the second Global Innovation and
Technology Summit in Hong Kong on Wednesday, organised by the Greater Bay Area Association of Academicians.
The event at the Hong Kong Science Park brought together dozens of senior government officials and academics from Hong Kong, the mainland and overseas to discuss how to boost I&T development through higher education.
The Greater Bay Area is Beijing’s plan to integrate Hong Kong, Macau and nine mainland cities into an economic powerhouse.
Tan Eng Chye, the president of the National University of Singapore, said his institution had started to send students to Silicon Valley and other innovation hotspots around the world for internships in 2002 to increase the exposure of its students to entrepreneurship.
“When you talk about research and innovation, industry has to come in,” he said.
The university has also sent students to the mainland, including Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen, with Guangzhou to be added to the list of about 20 places to increase their exposure to the bay area.
Tan added about 4,000 students who had gone through the programme had graduated in the last 20 years. They had founded more than 1,100 companies and two of them had become unicorns – privately owned start-ups valued at more than US$1 billion.
“We have a very structured collaboration with industry to train our students and graduates, and they come back and build an ecosystem within Singapore,” he said.
Fang Jianming, the deputy commissioner of the Office of the
Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong used the summit to highlight President Xi Jinping’s emphasis on “new quality productive forces”.
The phrase means productivity led by technological innovation designed to break away from traditional modes of economic growth, a key focus of last month’s “two sessions” meeting of the nation’s top political advisory body and legislature.
“The economy counts on technology, technology counts on talent and talent counts on education,” Fang said. “Amid the fierce competition for talent worldwide, Hong Kong should increase its attractiveness with even more preferential policies, a more solid foundation in the industry and a more diverse platform for innovation.”
Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry Sun Dong said expanding the I&T talent pool was crucial to the city’s development into an international hub for the sector.
Sun said better collaboration among government and the academic and research sectors was one of the key strategies required to reach the goal.
He also said the research, academic and industry sectors’ one-plus scheme, launched last October to encourage the commercialisation of research, had last week approved about 20 proposals out of 94 applications.
The economy counts on technology, technology counts on talent and talent counts on education FANG JIANMING, MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS