Day: 4 July 2022

BEIJING, July 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The Hong Kong Science Park, the city’s high-tech hub, welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping for a visit during his busy two-day trip to attend celebrations for the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China.

The Science Park is the largest research and development (R&D) and business incubation base in Hong Kong, housing more than 1,100 enterprises and 17,000 innovators.

Among them are SenseTime, an artificial intelligence (AI) giant, which is the only company from the Science Park listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and Da-Jiang Innovations (DJI), a world-leading commercial drone maker.

The Science Park, launched in 2002 by the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) to promote scientific and technological development in the city, also accommodates top-level laboratories with advanced scientific research equipment.

So far, it has 28 R&D laboratories jointly operated by world-class universities and research institutions with locally based universities in Hong Kong.

With a total floor area of 400,000 square meters and 23 well-equipped buildings as of March 2021, the park is still being expanded to increase its R&D space.

High expectations for Hong Kong

During his inspection tour of the Science Park, Xi said the country holds high expectations for Hong Kong.

He said China has written its support for developing Hong Kong into an international innovation and technology hub in its 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025). Released last year, the plan serves as the blueprint and action agenda for the social and economic development of the country in the next five years.

In recent years, with the support of the central government, Hong Kong has leveraged its own advantages to make remarkable achievements in basic research, talent cultivation, and development in the innovation and technology sector, Xi said.

In 2021, Hong Kong ranked 14th on the global list of 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 the academicians, researchers and youth representatives of innovation enterprises at the Science Park, he called on Hong Kong to better cooperate with mainland cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), strengthen the collaborative development of enterprises, universities and research institutions, and strive to build the GBA into a global highland for scientific and technological innovation.

GBA’s growing innovation power

The GBA is comprised of the two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao, and nine cities in the neighboring Guangdong Province. The total area is around 56,000 square kilometers and covers around 6 percent of the Chinese population.

The gross domestic product (GDP) of the GBA hit 12.6 trillion yuan ($1.97 trillion) last year, 2.4 trillion yuan more than in 2017. With less than 1 percent of the country’s land area, the GBA contributed to 11 percent of the national GDP.

Shao Xinyu, Chinese vice minister of science and technology, said the innovation capabilities of the GBA have been increasing continuously.

In 2021, the R&D expenditure of the nine cities in the Pearl River Delta region within the GBA topped 360 billion yuan, accounting for about 3.7 percent of their GDP, according to Shao, compared with the overall national level of 2.44 percent.

The number of high-tech enterprises in the area reached 57,000, and that of patents granted reached about 780,000, of which more than 100,000 were invention patents, he said.

In the list of the world’s top 100 geographical innovation clusters published by WIPO annually, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou cluster ranked second for the past two years in a row.

The rising innovation cluster, with noticeable growth in patents and scientific publications, has narrowed its gap with Tokyo-Yokohama, the No.1 innovation cluster on the list.

Supporting measures for Hong Kong and Macao’s sci-tech development

China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) has rolled out a series of measures to support the scientific and technological development of Hong Kong and Macao to promote their further integration into the national innovation system, according to Dai Gang, director of the International Cooperation Department at the MOST.

The ministry has supported Hong Kong in building a batch of innovation platforms, including 16 State Key Laboratories, six branches of the Chinese National Engineering Research Centers in Hong Kong, three national high-tech industrialization partner bases and two national-level incubators for science and technology companies.

A similar policy has been taken with Macao.

The ministry also put forward measures to support young people from Hong Kong and Macao 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

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BEIJING, July 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The value of trade between the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and the Chinese mainland has surged more than sixfold from $50.77 billion to $360.33 billion, an average annual increase of 8.5 percent since the Hong Kong’s return to the motherland 25 years ago, according to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.

While integrating itself into the country’s overall development, Hong Kong has become an important participant in domestic circulation and a key contributor connecting domestic and international circulation.

By the end of 2021, investment from Hong Kong into the mainland had topped $1.4 trillion, accounting for 57.6 percent of the mainland’s total attraction of overseas investments.

“Proactively integrating itself into the country’s overall development and carving out its role in national strategies, Hong Kong has maintained its strengths in its high degree of openness and in aligning with international rules,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Friday at the meeting celebrating the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to the motherland.

“With continuously expanding areas and enabling mechanisms for Hong Kong’s cooperation and exchanges with the mainland, people in Hong Kong now have better opportunities to start their own businesses and make achievements,” he added.

Tapping into Greater Bay Area

The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), which aims to become a world-class bay area and city cluster, is a significant national project conceived and promoted by President Xi.

On July 1, 2017, Xi witnessed the signing of a framework agreement between the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planner, and the governments of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao on deepening Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao cooperation.

A year later, Xi announced the opening of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, a supergiant sea-crossing traffic project that links Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao. It has become a physical symbol of China’s vision for the GBA.

On February 18, 2019, the outline development plan for the GBA was unveiled, which envisaged creating a role model of high-quality development, an international first-class bay area and a world-class city cluster.

Last September, a plan was launched for further developing the Qianhai cooperation zone for the southern metropolis of Shenzhen and the HKSAR, with the aim of helping the zone better play an exemplary and leading role in the development of the GBA.

The number of Hong Kong-funded enterprises in the Qianhai zone surged 156 percent year on year in 2021. Of the total foreign investment in actual use in Qianhai last year, 93.8 percent was from Hong Kong.

Individuals from Hong Kong are benefiting from the GBA initiative too. Hong Kong and Macao professionals from eight sectors, including teachers, doctors and tour guides, are now allowed to practice on the mainland with mutual recognition of qualifications. By now, over 3,000 professionals have obtained qualifications on the mainland.

Addressing at the celebration, Xi again said central government fully supports Hong Kong in its effort to seize historic opportunities offered by China’s development and actively dovetail itself with the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

National governance

“Since Hong Kong’s return to the motherland, it has been re-integrated into China’s governance system, and a constitutional order was established with the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ principle as its fundamental guideline,” Xi noted.

Chinese citizens who are permanent residents of the HKSAR can participate in the governance of both the SAR and the country as empowered by law.

After its return, at the Ninth National People’s Congress (NPC) in 1998, deputies from Hong Kong began to participate in the NPC, the highest body of state power, to discuss plans for national development and problems affecting people’s lives, and to put the people’s expectations at the top of the agenda on state matters.

Meanwhile, more than 5,600 representatives from all walks of life in Hong Kong serve as members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at all levels, including over 200 in the CPPCC National Committee. They are all valued advisors on key national programs and contributors to the development of the country.

Thirty-six deputies from Hong Kong were elected to participate in the work of the 13th NPC, accounting for 1.2 percent of total deputy numbers while over 200 CPPCC members are from the HKSAR, 10 percent of the total. Both ratios significantly exceed Hong Kong’s share of the country’s population of about 0.5 percent.

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-06-29/Hong-Kong-25-years-on-Better-integrating-into-national-development-1bfyY0p1lWo/index.html