Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry Professor Sun Dong is on Straight Talk this week to update us on the landscape of innovation and technology in Hong Kong and some of the key initiatives the government has been taking in this area.
Check out the full transcript of TVB’s Straight Talk host Dr Eugene Chan Kin-keung’s interview with Professor Sun Dong:
Chan: Good evening. I'm Eugene Chan, and welcome to Straight Talk. Hong Kong is on its way to become an international innovation and technology hub, and driving this effort is our guest Professor Sun Dong, the secretary for innovation, technology and industry. Prof Sun brings to his role a distinguished background as a top-tier scientist and engineer, recognized globally for his pioneering work in robotics. Prior to his appointment, Prof Sun was a Chair Professor and head of the Department of Bio Medical Engineering at the City University of Hong Kong and also a Legislative Council member. Welcome, Secretary, to the show!
Sun: Thank you, Eugene. Good evening!
Strategic imperative: Why HK must act now
Chan: Thank you. I think it's long overdue that we have you on the show because I&T is such a heated topic in Hong Kong and the rest of the world. I'm sure the viewers are going to ask us: Hong Kong has long been recognized as a global financial center and whether we can really become a global innovation powerhouse. So, let's start with “why now”, because, as I said, Hong Kong is known as a financial hub, not a tech place. And with fierce competition from Singapore, Shenzhen and beyond, why is pushing into I&T such a matter of, I would say, survival for Hong Kong's future economy?
Sun: Well, I&T has been developing so rapidly over the past decade. I believe I&T, in particular AI and many other high-tech technologies will reshape the world …
Chan: Right.
Sun: … in many aspects. So, Hong Kong traditionally is an international, financing and trading center.
Chan: Yes.
Sun: But we have to think about what is the new thing, new economic transfer we will achieve. You know, the 15th Five-Year Plan of our country has clearly indicated the rapid development of science and technology in our whole country, and steer the development of high quality product force. You know, about three years ago, Hong Kong promulgated the Hong Kong I&T development blueprint.
Chan: Right.
Sun: This blueprint has clearly outlined the clear development path and the strategic planning for I&T development in the next five to 10 years. We have pointed out the four major directions for Hong Kong I&T development. The first one is to enhance I&T ecosystem, from the pulp, from the mainstream basic research to the downstream industry development. The second direction is to enlarge the I&T pool, to inject new impetus for the growth. The third one will be promoting the digital economy, and building Hong Kong into a smart city, and finally to proactively integrate into the national development of our country and consolidate our role as a bridge, connecting the mainland and overseas.
Chan: Right, Professor, you know, last week when the fourth plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China concluded, we realized a lot of the material is covering the economy, especially I&T. And can you – being in the position for over three years now and, also, are also the Chair Professor of the City University in the relevant area – tell us has Hong Kong lagged behind? Or are we being too slow? What is your feeling on that?
Sun: Well, I have to say in the past three years, Hong Kong has rolled out a lot of new measures to expedite the development of I&T, and we do have some good achievements so far.
Chan: Right.
Sun: For example, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou Cluster ranks number one in the world's top 100 clusters in the 2025 Global Innovation Index. And our I&T ecosystem becomes more vibrant than before, with a framework of our proposed three major I&T parks and five thousand R&D institutions. And they have attracted a lot of I&T talent to come to Hong Kong. We have attracted a lot of I&T industries to develop here. I think we now almost finished the overall plan of the Hong Kong I&T ecosystem. The next important job for us is to realize what they proposed.
Chan: Right. Secretary, sorry, I really want to push an answer from you because we all know that I&T is important. We all know our mainland has done a great job in the world. We are, really, really advanced. With Hong Kong, such a … I often talk about … we have five universities in the top 100.
Sun: Yes. Yes.
Chan: You are from the City University. But we've always found that Hong Kong really … Well, we are very good, but we are not very good at making business, what we call transforming into making a sort of money-making thing. So, what is the bottleneck there? What is stopping this from lab to industry? What is stopping it?
Sun: Lab to industry actually is a very, very important issue. For many years, we have been criticized that Hong Kong has good basic research, but our technology transfer and industry development are far behind our mainland cities. Okay. So, you may notice in the past three years, following our I&T development blueprint, we ruled up a lot of policy to figure out the problem. For example, in the I&T development blueprint, we clearly pointed out that we will achieve coordinated development from the upstream basic research to the downstream industry development, where the mainstream technology transfer will play a key role. One example, I would like to show you is that about two years ago, we rolled out an important policy, called the Research Academic industry sector one plus scheme.
Chan: Right.
Sun: This is a subsidy scheme aiming to support university research teams to transfer and commercialize. They are in R&D after they come to real applications, emerging business.
Chan: Right. Secretary, I know that we must put money into areas that we feel are important. Do you see our startups of, sort of, surviving or is it scaling to a number that you are happy with?
Sun: So, actually, you know, it will take time from rolling out the policy to what you can see..
Chan: Okay, I mean in terms of the outcome.
Sun: Okay. So far, let me tell you, by the end of last year, the number of startups in Hong Kong has increased to 4,700.
Chan: Okay.
Sun: I believe the number will be increasing continuously. And for the list plus scheme I just mentioned, so far, we have supported two groups of the good research team. Right now, we are reviewing the third grant, third branch of applications.
Chan: Okay. Right.
Sun: Recently, we rolled out a new scheme called I&T pilot accelerator scheme. This scheme aims to support the international startup service provider to bring and gather many startups in Hong Kong and help them to grow successfully in Hong Kong.
Chan: Secretary, there's also a comment that I ended up while doing some research that people in Hong Kong are very, we are very careful, a little bit more on the conservative side. But then in sort of I&T, we need to kind of foster more of a vibrant risk-taking culture, which you see over in maybe in other countries. Do we have that now in Hong Kong, or do you promote that?
Sun: I think we are graduating from the culture as you said. And if we're doing the I&T, doing the startup, doing the innovation, you have to prepare to face the risk. Another thing I'd like to mention to you is, actually, our culture for I&T, for startup development is changing.
Chan: Okay.
Sun: I can give an example many years ago for the IP income – before, 70 percent used to go to university, …
Chan: Right.
Sun: … 30 percent go to the research team. Now we’ve changed it. Now, 70 percent, at least 70 percent, will go to the university research team, and less than 30 percent will go to the university. This is an example I like to show you. Our culture for I&T in university campus as well as in the field are changing gradually.
Chan: Right, secretary, I'm going to ask you the last question before the break, because in order for Hong Kong to move forward, we need a lot of talents, and we need to we're facing fierce competition with sort of attracting talents in Hong Kong I&T. So, what is Hong Kong’s unique advantage that all these top class engineers and scientists will choose Hong Kong to build a career and their future? That's important, isn't it?
Sun: Under the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ principle, Hong Kong always enjoy unparalleled advantage, okay, of getting the strong support from motherland while being closely connected to the world. So, Hong Kong has a pretty strong capability incentive in research. We have five universities ranking in the top 100 in the world, and we have a lot of international leading scientists and research scholar here. In addition tonight, Hong Kong’s other advantages, includes internationalization, International Financing and Trading Centre. Very mature ecosystem, and particularly robust IP protection systems and so on. I believe all these advantages will be able to position Hong Kong as a good place to attract the talent from overseas.
Chan: Okay, Secretary, time for a short break now.
Sun: Sure.
Chan: We'll be back for more Straight Talk.
Engine room: How HK is building a new industrial base
Chan: Welcome back. Secretary for Innovation, Technology, and Industry Prof Sun Dong has been updating us on the landscape of innovation and technology in Hong Kong, and some of the key initiatives that the government has been taking in this area.
So, Secretary, you have given a very good roadmap, you have your blueprints, you have your funding, you have the talents all sorted out. Let's move on to the actual engine that we need. When we say data, we need to build a sort of data center. I know you have this called Sandy Ridge cluster. So, what is it? And what are you trying to create in terms of, apart from data storage? There must be a strategy behind this. I know that it is going to be up to tender by the end of the year, hopefully it will move up very quickly. Maybe you can share with the viewers why do you push for this data center?
Sun: You know in Hong Kong R&D development blueprint, we have identified several key areas to develop for Hong Kong. One of them is AI and data science related industries. So, we are determined to build Hong Kong as a regional digital infrastructure hub, and also of course, international data hub. So, for this purpose we need to build a lot of the key infrastructure where the computing power facility will be one of these key infrastructures. So, you know we launched an open tender for building international data park at the Sandy Ridge. This area will have about more than 116 square meters for top tier data center use.
Chan: Right.
Sun: We hope through this international data park, we can strengthen our position as a regional infrastructure hub, foster the growth of data and AI related industry, and advance our development of the digital economy and smart city initiatives.
Chan: Right. Secretary, do you have any sort of incentives or even other policy support, so that this particularly attractive is to the top tier international data center operators? We need them as well, anything you are going to get them to come?
Sun: You may notice it is first time for us to adopt the so-called two-in-the-loop approach …
Chan: Right.
Sun: … in the tender assessment. In this way we can enable a comprehensive assessment for the tender proposal, on both non-premier and premier proposals. Our purpose is to select the proposals that can best unleash city's potential.
Chan: Right.
Sun: Yeah.
Chan: I see, this is going to be a major investment for Hong Kong.
Sun: Yes.
Chan: Are you confident that the local or even the regional demand for data capacity would justify our investment and will be successful?
Sun: We strongly believe that computing power facade is a very, very important foundation to foster the growth of data processing and AI related industry. So, taking Cyberport as example, since its establishment of super computing center in Cyberport, it has attracted a lot of very, very good technology talents and enterprises together in Cyberport in the past two years.
Chan: Right.
Sun: Because this important infrastructure. So, I believe the same effect will happen in Sandy Ridge for the future international data park. Its economic impact will expand to the Greater Bay Area and the nearby regions and countries.
Fueling startups: Pilot I&T accelerator scheme
Chan: Right. So, we have talked about the actual engine room behind everything. Let's talk about the startups. We talked about a bit earlier in the first part, you said it has done well that more are coming. And we know the government, the new pilot I&T assessor scheme, actually now is in the market with private players like the 10 Wings Accelerator. So, what types of companies, sort of so-called high risk in early stage company that this pilot scheme is designed to support that the private market might overlook? Because we try to help everybody, don't we? So, how do you do that?
Sun: Well, the Accelerator aims to attract and gather some well-established startups and foster the classroom effect, and strengthen the support of good startups with the potential to become the leading company in the future. You know the chief executive announced this INT Accelerator scheme in his policy address last year. And the LegCo just approved the funding last month. So, we will roll out this policy very, very soon. Under this scheme, each service provider can receive up to HK$30 million for maximum three years to attract and gather the startup in Hong Kong.
Chan: Right.
Sun: So, we hope in this way, we can accelerate the startup development in Hong Kong, through providing resources and systematic training for them, including personal capital, working space, legal service, business network, and so on. So, this is our rationale.
Chan: Right. So, Secretary, you know that in Hong Kong we always … when we are doing very well with the financial reserves, we often put on the funding. But we also have learned that funding alone isn't good enough to make sure it goes fast enough. So, what other support like mentorship or even partnering with other strategic partners, or even market access that your bureau is going to ensure these companies will do well? Because it is our interest that they do well, isn't it?
So, that's why I said the funding support or policy initiative just one aspect from the government point of view. The most important thing is to let the industry to work with the market force to develop the startup in Hong Kong. So, this program aims to attract the international startup service provider from all different places in the world to come to Hong Kong.
Chan: Right.
Sun: And then gather the resources, including capital, people, technology, and so on.
Chan: Okay.
Sun: This is our purpose. To work with the market force.
The manufacturing renaissance: New industrialization
Chan: Right. So, apart from all these startup initiatives, let's talk about, I will use the word “manufacturing renaissance” because it is what we call the new industrialization. The policy address, CE has said that he is going to be using different application scenarios to attract high-target enterprises. Can you tell us any concrete examples that you think will be is going to convince a company to come to Hong Kong? Because everything we do, we want people to come to Hong Kong, to have the career here, especially the I&T sector. So, any concrete example you can give on this?
Sun: One example is UISEE company.
Chan: Right.
Sun: We attracted this company to Hong Kong several years ago. So, in the past many years, we continually support the company to develop a local market, particularly for their autonomous driving, technology service products, in Hong Kong Island. After setting up good example in Hong Kong, the first expand to overseas. Now they successfully, using their product solution in many international airports, many of them are very, very famous airport. This is good example.
Chan: Right.
Sun: Another example has recently happened, we successfully attracted BrainCo. This is one of the six small dragon companies in Hangzhou.
Chan: Right.
Sun: We not only help them to settle in Hong Kong through some support in workspace and financial, and so on. We also help them to go through some necessary procedures, such as their products can be quickly used in Hong Kong. So, this is two good examples about the application scenario, attraction of the good business in Hong Kong.
Chan: Right. And I know that you have lowered the project application for HK$300 million to HK$150 million. What has the response like since you lowered it? Have there been more applications or how do you see it?
Sun: Yes. So, you know we roll out the new industrialization acceleration scheme last year. And in this scheme, we require the minimum investment cost will be HK$300 million. So, in the past 10 years, we listened to a lot of market feedback. Many SMEs, they cannot afford so much investment at the very beginning. Therefore, we decide to low down this minimum request from HK$300 million to HK$150 million, such as more local SME can benefit from this industry supporting policies. Therefore, to broaden the scheme coverage. This is motivation of making such change.
Hetao Hong Kong Park & cross-border synergy
Chan: Right. I know it's going to take some time for the park to do well. But more importantly, I want to ask you what policy breakthrough are you working on with domain and authorities to facilitate sort of smoother flow of data, talent, and capital across the country?
Sun: They talk about a very important part for the future Hetao Hong Kong Park development. Actually, we have proactively working with mainland authorities and the Shenzhen municipal government to explore the efficient cross-boundary floor of elements, including, as you said, personal, capital, data materials, particularly some bio samples. I can tell you we have made very good progress so far. And we almost achieve the final agreement for the data and some bio sample, these important elements to cross-boundary for the anti-use within the total Hetao area. So, now we are discussing the cross-boundary floor of other elements, such as personal. We will make a bridge to connect the two parks, one is the Shenzhen Park and other Hong Kong Park. Meanwhile we are exploring some efficient policy for cross-boundary floor of the capital, such as some mainland companies can bring more money to run their business, including construction of the buildings in the Hetao Hong Kong Park. I believe we will announce some good news in the future.
Chan: Thank you, Professor Sun, for sharing with us your insights on the formula for success to transform Hong Kong into an innovation hub. This formula, as we have heard, is indeed complex. It requires not just government strategy, but the cultural shift towards risk-taking and the collective belief that Hong Kong can indeed be a home for the world's brightest minds and most groundbreaking ideas.
Thank you for joining us on Straight Talk and have a good evening.
