Xia Yuanjie

szrbgracexia@126.com

PROMINENT industry experts, educators and entrepreneurs from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) shared their insights on the area’s tech and innovation development and opportunities at the Tech & Innovation Summit in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province, yesterday.

Jointly organized by Tencent and Nanfang Daily, the event focused on the integration of industry, university and research in the tech and innovation sector.

Facing global supply chain disruptions and the U.S.-China trade war, it is unprecedentedly significant and urgent to make breakthroughs in key technology sectors, Fan Gang, president of China Development Institute (CDI) in Shenzhen, stressed at the summit.

Statistics showed that the number of unicorn companies in the GBA was only a quarter of the San Francisco Bay Area in 2020. “Private companies are encouraged to take an active role in resolving bottlenecks in major technologies and products. A complementary relationship between market and R&D is key to improve the GBA’s technological innovation capacity,” Fan said.

“Shenzhen has numerous leading high-tech companies, like Huawei and Tencent. These corporate champions should bring along medium and small-sized businesses and start-ups to get stronger, better, and bigger together,” Fan advocated.

Hong Kong has strong protection of intellectual property rights, sound financial services and one of the world’s most liberal markets, Xue Yongheng, director of Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Bureau, said at the summit. “Hong Kong will cooperate with Shenzhen to give full play to the GBA’s technological innovation potential.”

Michael Chuan Pang, vice president of Macao University of Science and Technology, emphasized that “High-end talents’ education is the fountainhead of technological innovation.” He called upon Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao to promote the GBA’s higher education to a higher level.