Nurturing young talent is a key to the future success of Hong Kong
21 October 2018
The work on the youth is a priority commitment of the current-term Government. It takes ten years to grow a tree, but it takes a hundred years to educate a person. Nurturing talent is indeed a long-term task that requires continuous efforts.
In the Policy Address last year, we pledged to do our best in youth development work by addressing young people’s concerns about education, career pursuit and home ownership, and encouraging their participation in politics as well as public policy discussion and debate. Further to that, we put forward numerous initiatives in this year’s Policy Address in the dedicated chapter of “Connecting with Young People”, together with more related policy measures in other chapters about nurturing talent.
The Youth Development Commission chaired by me has pinned down three broad directions of work, namely assisting in young people’s selection of suitable study pathways, facilitating young people’s career development and promoting their upward mobility, and strengthening communication channels with young people.
A total of $1 billion in the Budget this year has been reserved to support the commission’s work. Of this, $500 million is first allocated in the latest Policy Address to implement a number of initiatives. They include, inter alia, stepping up government support for young people to pursue innovation and entrepreneurship.
For young people in general, it is not easy to start up a business, given the high rentals as well as their limited capital and business experience. Appreciating the difficulties faced by them, we endeavour to put in place appropriate measures to help young entrepreneurs develop their careers and promote upward mobility.
The Space Sharing Scheme for Youth announced in the Policy Address last year has met enthusiastic responses. More than 100 000 square feet of shared space in total have been offered so far, benefitting over 1 000 young people. The properties involved are located in five districts (i.e. Kwun Tong, Lai Chi Kok, Tsuen Wan, Wong Chuk Hang and Wan Chai). Some are managed by non-government operators, such as Cyberport, Po Leung Kuk, the Hong Kong Arts Development Council and the Federation of Hong Kong Industries. Targeting young tenants engaged in innovation and technology, creative industries as well as the arts and culture, the shared work spaces or studios are leased at concessionary rentals far below market levels.
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Not only is “hardware” taken care of, but “software” is also provided by the operators under the scheme, including diverse and specific entrepreneurship guidance and support services. We will actively invite more property owners and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to show their corporate social responsibility through joining this innovative scheme to help aspiring young entrepreneurs realise their dreams of entrepreneurship.
Young people are a powerful new force for innovation and entrepreneurship, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (Greater Bay Area) are presenting them a new runway with new opportunities. Comprising 11 cities, the Greater Bay Area is home to nearly 70 million people, on a par with Britain, France or Italy. Having an economy about the size of Korea or Australia, it is a mammoth market with tremendous potential. However, the Greater Bay Area cities’ innovation and entrepreneurship polices, the entrepreneurial bases’ operation and the procedures required for establishing an enterprise are little known to our young people. What is more, there is a lack of relevant information and services on the market. Venturing there is by no means easy.
In this regard, the Policy Address this year proposes to, through injection into the Youth Development Fund, explore introducing a new subsidy scheme for local NGOs to provide Hong Kong young people starting their businesses in Hong Kong and other Greater Bay Area cities with start-up support and incubation services. Initially, a pilot programme will be offered jointly with the Hong Kong United Youth Association. While the Government will serve as a facilitator and a promoter, NGOs can perform the roles of a shepherd and a connector to help those young people interested in starting their businesses in the Greater Bay Area to settle in there.
The Government also encourages youth entrepreneurship through the Entrepreneurship Matching Fund established under the Youth Development Fund in 2016, in the form of providing a matching subsidy in collaboration with NGOs. Financial assistance as well as entrepreneurial mentorship are provided for young people to start up businesses in Hong Kong or the Mainland. Each eligible team can receive up to $300,000 of government subsidies. In the first round of applications, about $24 million was allocated for nine NGOs to implement their youth entrepreneurship projects. A total of 100 projects involving about 190 young entrepreneurs received subsidies from the fund. Depending on the project contents, each of the teams received a subsidy ranging from $30,000 to $300,000. We plan to inject $300 million to the Youth Development Fund in 2019-20 to take forward the efforts so that more NGOs can apply and more young people can benefit.
Our goal in the long run is to create a sustainable ecosystem conducive to youth innovation and entrepreneurship, open up more development space and opportunities for Hong Kong’s younger generations and develop the Greater Bay Area into a world-class international platform for innovation and entrepreneurship.
Besides youth innovation and entrepreneurship, the development of innovation and technology (I&T) is also high on the agenda of the Government, which has shown increasingly firm and clear commitment in recent years.
We have a solid foundation in technology and well-established strength in scientific research. With four of our government-funded universities in the world’s top 100, we attract the best researchers from leading universities and institutes across the globe. Moreover, Hong Kong is endowed with the unique advantage of “One Country, Two Systems”, a sound system of the rule of law, protection for intellectual property rights, sophisticated international connections, our status as a financial centre, the vast hinterland market in the Mainland and so on. All these have given us an edge in developing Hong Kong into an international I&T hub.
Talent is the key to I&T success, and young people have a definitely crucial role to play. The Government understands that building human capital takes time, and hence it is all the more imperative for us to keep doing better in nurturing talent.
To expand the pool of technology talent, the Technology Talent Scheme was launched in August this year. The scheme comprises a Postdoctoral Hub programme to provide funding support for eligible organisations and companies to recruit postdoctoral talent for research and development work, and a Re-industrialisation and Technology Training Programme to subsidise local companies for training their staff in advanced technologies.
Response to the scheme has been positive. As at mid-October, about 190 applications have been received under the Postdoctoral Hub programme and more than 160 have been approved, involving a total amount exceeding $75 million. As for the Re-industrialisation and Technology Training Programme, 120 applications for public course registration and 43 for training grant have been received. Approval has been given to 54 of the former and 34 (involving 62 trainees) of the latter.
The Government will invest heavily in innovation, entrepreneurship and technology to enhance the upward mobility prospects of young people, so that they can spread their wings and fly high, taking the helm and steering the city into a new era.
