BEIJING, July 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The Hong Kong Science Park, the city’s high-tech hub, welcomes Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit during his busy two-day trip to attend the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China.
Science Park is the largest research and development (R&D) and business incubation center in Hong Kong, hosting more than 1,100 companies and 17,000 innovators.
Among them are SenseTime, the artificial intelligence (AI) giant, which is the only company from Science Park listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and Da-Jiang Innovations (DJI), the world’s leading maker of commercial drones.
The Science Park, launched in 2002 by the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) to promote the development of science and technology in the city, also accommodates top-level laboratories with state-of-the-art scientific research equipment.
So far, it has 28 R&D laboratories jointly operated by world-class universities and research institutes with local universities in Hong Kong.
With a total floor area of 400,000 square meters and 23 complete buildings as of March 2021, the park is still being expanded to increase its R&D space.
During his inspection tour of Science Park, Xi said the country had high hopes for Hong Kong.
He said China had written its support for developing Hong Kong into an international innovation and technology center in the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025). Released last year, the plan serves as a blueprint and action agenda for the country’s social and economic development in the next five years.
In recent years, with the support of the central government, Hong Kong has leveraged its own advantages to make outstanding achievements in basic research, talent development and development in the innovation and technology sector, Xi said.
In 2021, Hong Kong will be ranked 14th in the global list of the most innovative economies, according to the Global Innovation Index (GII) released by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
The HKSAR government should give full play to the role of technological innovation in supporting and leading economic development, Xi added.
During his exchanges with academics, researchers and youth representatives of innovation enterprises in Science Park, he asked Hong Kong to better cooperate with mainland cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao (GBA) Greater Bay Area, strengthen the collaborative development of enterprises, universities and research institutes, and strive to build GBA into a global plateau for scientific and technological innovation.
The GBA consists of the two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, and nine cities in the adjacent Guangdong Province. The total area is about 56,000 square kilometers and covers about 6 percent of China’s population.
GBA’s gross domestic product (GDP) reached 12.6 trillion yuan ($1.97 trillion) last year, 2.4 trillion yuan more than 2017. With less than 1 percent of the country’s land area, GBA contributes 11 percent of the nation’s GDP . .
Shao Xinyu, China’s vice minister of science and technology, said GBA’s innovation capability is constantly improving.
By 2021, R&D spending of nine cities in the Pearl River Delta region in GBA will reach 360 billion yuan, accounting for about 3.7 percent of their GDP, according to Shao, compared with an overall national rate of 2.44 percent.
The number of high-tech enterprises in the area stands at 57,000, and the patents granted reach about 780,000, of which more than 100,000 are invention patents, he said.
In the list of the world’s top 100 geographic innovation clusters published by WIPO annually, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou cluster has been ranked second for the last two consecutive years.
The rising innovation cluster, with marked growth in patents and scientific publications, has narrowed the gap with Tokyo-Yokohama, the No.1 innovation cluster on the list.
Supporting measures for Hong Kong and Macau sci-tech development
China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) has launched a series of measures to support the development of science and technology in Hong Kong and Macau to promote their further integration into the national innovation system, according to Dai Gang, director of the Department of International Cooperation. most widely.
The ministry has supported Hong Kong in establishing a number of innovation platforms, including 16 State Key Laboratories, six branches of the China National Engineering Research Center in Hong Kong, three national high-tech industrialization partner bases and two national-level science and science incubators. technology company.
A similar policy has been taken with Macau.
The ministry also proposed measures to support young people from Hong Kong and Macau to pursue careers in innovative industries and start their own businesses on the mainland.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-07-03/Hong-Kong-on-highway-to-become-global-tech-and-innovation-hub–1blECIxf7X2/index.html
