Hong Kong a rising contributor to Greater Bay Area’s research in strategic fields like AI and biomedicine, report says

Hong Kong has become a rising contributor to academic research and development in the Greater Bay Area (GBA), covering fields of national strategic importance that include biomedicine, environmental science, clean energy, artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing, according to a new report.

The GBA has seen total research output from the region nearly double from 2018 to 2022, as the number of publications reached 142,663 by the end of the period, according to a report released on Monday by information analytics firm Elsevier, which was commissioned by the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). The number of active researchers in the region also doubled during the same period, with 207,800 scholars as of 2022.

“As an engine driving the future growth of our country, the region must strengthen the deep integration of academic research, innovation and entrepreneurship,” CUHK Pro-Vice-Chancellor Sham Mai-har said at the launch of the report in southern tech hub Shenzhen.

The GBA is Beijing’s plan to integrate Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities in southern Guangdong province into a new powerhouse – with more than 86 million people combined – that is envisioned to surpass the economic heft of the New York Metropolitan Area and Tokyo Bay region by 2035.