China’s hi-tech hub Guangdong sees higher education investments boom in bid to rival Silicon Valley with home-grown talent
- Guangdong province in China’s Greater Bay Area is seeing billions of yuan allocated to build several new universities and colleges in the next few years
- Technological decoupling with the United States has helped fuel a sense of urgency in Beijing to close the gap between Chinese higher education institutions and those in the West
An investment boom in institutions of higher education is taking place in Guangdong province, one of China’s biggest manufacturing hubs and its up-and-coming hi-tech region with grand ambitions to rival Silicon Valley in the United States.
Guangdong will open 11 new universities this year, with more to come in the next few years. In Shenzhen city, the local government announced that it would invest 150 billion yuan (US$23.21 billion) to build 20 new universities and colleges by 2025, with an aim of boosting the number of full-time students on campus in the city to 250,000 from about 103,800 now.
Government-backed subsidies and funding have been splashed out to support the higher education blueprint. Three universities in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) – a megapolis comprising nine cities in mainland China, including Shenzhen, as well as the Hong Kong and Macau special administrative regions – received a combined annual budget of around 29 billion yuan in 2020.
In China’s quest to be self-sufficient in technology, access to top-tier talent is an urgent requirement. While China has attracted some overseas talent to the mainland, its higher education plans indicate that it hopes to take a home-grown approach to cultivating talent.
Several Hong Kong universities are also flocking to set up operations in the GBA.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong opened a Shenzhen campus in 2014, which was soon regarded as Shenzhen’s top university, with independence in teaching, teacher recruitment and its curriculum.
The construction of a 30.7 billion yuan Hong Kong Polytechnic University campus in Foshan city was included in Guangdong’s 2020 development plan.