My Take | Xi Jinping cash route sure to pay off for Hong Kong scientists
By appealing to the president for financial support, Hong Kong’s leading research scientists barely paid notice to the city’s government and the non-track record of Science Park start-ups
Twenty-four of our leading scientists wrote to President Xi Jinping last year to plead for financial support for the city’s research and development.
Now, state-run news agency Xinhua has announced that Beijing will come bearing gifts by allowing local researchers to access national research funding and eliminate tariffs on relocating lab equipment across the border. This could be a game-changer for the city’s research and development community.
Strangely, the news headlines have been about whether national funding could compromise academic freedom in Hong Kong. The news cycles must have been too slow in the past week.
The real story, it seems to me, is that our leading research scientists, many of them already members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences or the Chinese Academy of Engineering, took matters into their own hands and directly approached Beijing, which reciprocated.
Rightly, the parties involved barely paid notice to the Hong Kong government, its Science Park or Nicholas Yang Wei-hsiung and his Innovation and Technology Bureau.