Industry insiders say Hong Kong's SAR has accelerated innovation and technology development

177
3
Industry insiders say Hong Kong's SAR has accelerated innovation and technology development

Industry insiders said that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has accelerated the process of embracing a new era of innovation and technology backed by favorable policies.

With the support of the 14th Five-Year Plan 2021-25 for the development of Hong Kong as an international hub for innovation and technology and the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the path to innovation and technology development will be promising, according to Zhang Zhaoxiang, executive director of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Hong Kong Institute of Science and Innovation, and the tremendous opportunities brought about by the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Mac He said that enterprises in the city should set a global vision, make full use of Hong Kong's advantages of internationalization, integrate into the overall situation of the nation to embrace a longer-term development prospect, and be backed by Hong Kong's rich technological resources and its status as a world-class technology center.

In the past five years, the HKSAR has invested over $150 billion and $19.11 billion in support of I&T development, and set up the InnoHK Research Clusters initiative with more than $20 billion to further promote life science and artificial intelligence and robotics, two strategic fields in which Hong Kong enjoys clear advantages.

Hong Kong Science Park and Cyberport are two major facilities in the SAR to grow innovation and high-technology startups. During the past decades, the Hong Kong Science Park has incubated around 1,100 startups and tech ventures from 24 countries and regions, accounting for nearly 30 percent of the total startups in the city. Three unicorns emerged - Intelligent manufacturing technology company SmartMore, Smart Logistics firm Lalamove and AI giant SenseTime, which was launched at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Shang Hailong, general manager of SenseTime Hong Kong, said that the Partnership Research Programme is one of the most efficient government initiatives to boost collaboration between private enterprises and Hong Kong universities. He said that it breaks the barriers between a research achievement and a value-added intellectual property.

When opportunities arise in the technology and innovation sector, funding programs involved in industry-universities collaboration play a significant role, according to Shang.

He said that close collaboration between industries and universities identified in the programs can speed up innovation and create a technology boom in the region, with the blueprint of the Greater Bay Area putting land scale and funding programs in place.

Shang said that the new-term government has already laid out forward-looking strategies for the next step in the development of the innovation and technology sector with the reorganisation of the Innovation and Technology Bureau into the Innovation, Technology and Industry Bureau, which will take effect on Friday.

He said that the government will put more emphasis on the advanced manufacturing sector and encourage private enterprises to commercialize scientific results.