From El País, November 17:
The Beijing-controlled megacity is courting international researchers with astronomical salaries and cutting-edge equipment. After its success story with trade and capital flows, it now wants to do the same with science and tech
The skyscrapers, 70 stories high, are filled with tiny apartments. The streets are full of high-end shops and bustling markets. On the rooftops, the neon signs of the world’s leading banks are perched. This is Hong Kong, one of Asia’s megacities, where capitalism is late-stage. If an alien were to land here, it would never guess that the place belonged to a communist country like China. And today, the former British colony — which still maintains a degree of autonomy from Beijing and remains one of the country’s financial and commercial epicenters — is moving toward a new goal: to consolidate itself as the scientific capital of China.
“We’re asking the international community for its support,” sums up Timothy Tong, a 73-year-old Hongkongese engineer who is also chairman of the Hong Kong Laureate Forum, which was held in early November to award the Shaw Prize, considered to be the Nobel Prizes of Asia. The event brought together 12 previous winners, as well as 200 young researchers from 20 countries, with the aim of strengthening international scientific collaboration. It’s a showcase for Hong Kong’s science sector, Tong acknowledges, as well as for the rest of China.
At the event, to which EL PAÍS was invited, there was an air of the future, mixed with echoes of the Cold War. China is already the world’s leading power in some scientific fields of research, the United States is hurtling toward an unprecedented decline in this area, and Europe is realizing that, if it wants to continue conducting world-class research, it will have to cooperate much more with the unstoppable Asian giant, even if that means swallowing its political prejudices.
In 2019, Hong Kong experienced violent protests against the Beijing regime. “Hong Kong is not China,” the demonstrators chanted. The uprising was ultimately crushed. And new national security laws have (for now) prevented any public protests, with the threat of severe prison sentences.
Today, the message is that the city can be the gateway to China for Western scientists, offering them astronomical salaries (a professor can earn around $14,000 a month), a level of freedom that’s unthinkable in mainland China, as well as easy visa-free entry. The enclave has always succeeded with trade and capital flows. It now wants to replicate this success in the field of science and technology....
....MUCH MORE
