Sunny Chai: Each city of the Greater Bay Area has its advantages for innovative technology

Innovative technology has become a hot topic in Hong Kong over recent years. As Sunny Chai, Chairperson of Hong Kong Science & Technology Parks Corporation (HPSTP), points out, the HKSAR Government has invested over HKD50 billion to support innovative technology, with some HKD40 billion going into science and technology park-related projects.

The innovation industry is closely connected to the development of the Bay Area. As Chai notes, the Bay Area needs to open up connections with the Lok Ma Chau Loop Innovation and Technology Park to facilitate the flow of goods, business, capital and information (the “Four Flows”), in order to enable effective collaboration between scientists and researchers in Hong Kong and Mainland China. Chai believes that the development of the Lok Ma Chau Loop Innovation and Technology Park, which began last year, reflects the close level of cooperation between Hong Kong and Shenzhen in the field of innovative technology. He believes that each of the “9+2”cities in the Bay Area initiative has its own unique features, and these individual strengths also extend to the field of innovative technology. Chai stresses that each of these unique roles is equally important, so there is simply no need to get bogged down in questions of which city is most important; efforts should instead be focused on how to further strengthen their respective complementary advantages.

Chai believes that the key development questions are how to go about bringing in necessary resources and how to enable the results to “go global”. There are business opportunities everywhere one looks in the Bay Area, and CGCC is working with other local chambers of commerce and Chinese business associations around the world to transform the Bay Area into a platform from which the whole world can benefit.