BEIJING, July 3, 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.
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