I&T Tops Gov't Agenda

Secretary for Innovation & Technology Nicholas Yang

Innovation and technology has been a top policy agenda of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Our vision is to drive diversified economic development by I&T, and develop Hong Kong into an international I&T hub which is open to talents around the world.

Over the past few years, the Hong Kong SAR Government committed significant resources of over US$12.8 billion towards a broad spectrum of initiatives to strengthen Hong Kong's I&T ecosystem, including increasing resources for research and development, nurturing technology talents, implementing forward-looking tax reform to incentivise R&D activities, providing investment funding, building I&T-related infrastructures, and helping small and medium-sized enterprises to upgrade and transform with I&T solutions for their businesses, etc.

One of the key initiatives I would like to highlight here is that we are building two world-class research clusters in Hong Kong. We have set aside US$1.3 billion to establish Health@InnoHK focusing on healthcare technologies, and AIR@InnoHK focusing on artificial intelligence and robotics technologies at our Science Park. Through this initiative, we can capitalise on the strengths of our local universities and attract top-notch universities and scientific research institutions around the world to collaborate with us, and thus enhance Hong Kong's overall research and development capability in the long run.  

I am proud to say that we are doing quite well on this effort. So far, the two clusters have attracted the attention of a number of world-acclaimed institutions. To give just a few examples, Harvard University, Stanford University, Imperial College London, University College London and Johns Hopkins University have teamed up with Hong Kong's institutions, expressing strong interest in joining the two clusters. We anticipate that the first batch of research institutions will be setting up their laboratories in the Hong Kong Science Park by the end of this year.

As President Xi remarked, the Belt & Road Initiative is China's initiative, the opportunities and fruits that it presents belong to the whole world. Collaboration under the initiative will surely be a win-win for all parties.

Secretary for Innovation & Technology Nicholas Yang gave these remarks at the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation’s thematic forum on silk road of innovation in Beijing on April 25.