Population ageing, elderly care, health policy, labor, social stratification, inequalities

Innovation is the main and growing source of growth in many countries. Such growth centred on social and environmental sustainability requires regions to play a vanguard role in building virtuous innovation trajectories and in exploring untapped potential for regional and national growth.

With the industrial transformation and upgrading, China has become one of the rising stars of global innovation. The Chinese government takes innovation as one of the key drivers of its future growth and convergence with more developed nations. Greater Bay Area (GBA), the next world-class hub for innovation and technology transfer, plays the role of the vanguard to China for domestic and foreign investments in many industries. What can GBA and China do to keep the innovation system open and continue to benefit from the global technological progress is the main tasks for HKUST IPP’s Regional Innovation Systems (RIS) cluster in its current and future research.

Relevant Projects

Urban China: New Cities, New Economy

Urbanization in China continues apace, with China’s cities expected to accommodate an additional 255 million residents by 2050. In this same30-year period, humanity must reach net-zero emissions in order to hold the average global temperature increase to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The decisions made about China’s cities today could lock in future prosperity and resilience – or vulnerability and decline.

This research project is based on offers insights for China’s policy-making under its 14th Five-Year Plan. It identifies opportunities from a new type of urbanization that can help China achieve high-quality growth in the coming decade and create an economy based on high value-added manufacturing and services while avoiding enormous environmental costs.

our analysis provides policy-makers with recommendations on how a new model of urbanization can help enhance China’s economic, social and environmental prosperity while avoiding climate catastrophe.

A Comparative Study of the Science and Technology Funding Systems and Project Management in Hong Kong and Mainland

The coordinated development and innovation of Greater Bay Area(GBA) has become a national development strategy of China. The key task of building the GBA international centre for technology and innovation has been rolled out. On the path of exploring the utilization of global scientific and technological innovation resources, GBA is moving towards an innovation-oriented economic system by constantly improving the cooperative innovation system and mechanism, optimizing the development model of cross-regional cooperation and innovation, building an international and open-ended regional innovation system, and enhancing the efficiency of scientific research transformation.

To speed up the completion of these objectives, it is urgent and necessary to reform the scientific and technological system. Particularly, solving the cross-border use of scientific research and project funds will become a vital part of the reform. Allowing cross-border circulation of scientific research funds is not only conductive to taking advantage of the manufacturing advantages of the Pearl River Delta, but also conductive to promoting the industrialization of research results of Hong Kong universities, thereby strengthening the cross-border exchanges and cooperation between Hong Kong and Mainland China.

This research provides a basis for scientifically formulating methods for the cross-border use of scientific research funds by investigating Hong Kong’s science and technology funding system and the management measures of major scientific research projects, and comparing them with the practices and experiences of Mainland China.

A Study on Open Innovation in Guangzhou: Current Status and Policy Recommendations

The construction of an international science, technology and innovation hub is an urgent need for Guangzhou’s industrial transformation and upgrading. As the central city of the Pearl River Delta, Guangzhou has cemented its position as one of the largest economies in China for years. At a time of the global economic downturn, Guangzhou is among one of the cities suffering tremendous pressure and challenges of industrial transformation and upgrading. The establishment of international science, technology and innovation hub is the key to develop Guangzhou as a significant gateway city to participate in the international industrial division, cooperation and competition.

Moving towards a world city, Guangzhou requires continuous improvement of its international influence and competitiveness. Hence, it is an inevitable choice for Guangzhou to build an international science, technology and innovation hub.

Research Directions:

• Evaluation of the status quo of open innovation;
• Comparative studies on the domestic and international open innovation Systems;
• Policy recommendations on open innovation in Guangzhou

A comparative Study on Innovation Policies in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Silicon Valley, Israel, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong

Combining documentary analysis with fieldtrips, this project conducts a comparative study of innovation policies in typical cities and regions on their innovation policies. By comparing similarities and differences of these policies, and asses how these policies align with regional innovation development, we aim to explore the possibilities of leveraging the strengths of Guangzhou, which serves as a central city of Greater Bay Area (GBA), upgrade Guangzhou’s comprehensive capabilities of regional innovation, strengthen the cooperation between GBA and global high-end innovation areas, and promote innovation-driven development of Guangdong and GBA.

High-quality Development Strategy for the New R&D Institutions in Guangdong

The commitment to developing new R&D institutions is the key to establish national innovation system and implement innovation-driven development strategies. Currently, new R&D institutions have become the driving force for promoting technological innovation and industrial transformation updating in Guangdong, and the main platform for attracting and innovation resources. The quantity and quality of new R&D institutions in Guangdong have been greatly improved to play a leading role in attracting innovative talents and accelerating innovation and development.

In the current situation where Guangdong is accelerating the construction of an international science, technology and innovation centre in Greater Bay Area (GBA), it is even more urgent to build new high-level R&D institutions possessing global competitive advantage.

This project aims to investigate key factors influencing the high-quality development of 251 new R&D institutions recognized by the government of Guangdong province, and provide constructive and feasible solutions.

Aligning Science, Technology and Innovation Rules in Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macao

With the development and transformation of economic structure of Greater Bay Area (GBA), the traditional cooperation model can no longer satisfy development needs of this area. It is necessity to co-build a regional coordinated development system for innovation by interconnecting the innovation resources of Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macao.

Great progress has been made in the cooperation of co-building platform and sharing hardware facilities. However, we still need to tackle many challenges in software management services and innovation rules which impede free mobility and optimal allocation of innovative resources within GBA.

Our research mainly attempts to conduct comparative and comprehensive studies on the innovation rules in Hong Kong and Macao, identify the potential problems of Guangzhou in innovation rules and development to enhance the coordinated development of GBA, based on the entire chain of Guangzhou’s “scientific discovery, technological invention, industrial development, talent support, and ecological optimization”.