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China’s ‘MIT of Greater Bay Area’ is a bid to turn southern region into innovation powerhouse
- A new university is planned to open in Dongguan in 2023, and offer a focus on science and technology to enhance the area as an economic and business hub
- One unemployed scholar said a new university would push up house prices, creating new hardship for low-paid workers
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As part of its ambitions to turn the Greater Bay Area (GBA) into an innovation powerhouse, China is building a new university focusing on science and technology in the Southern Chinese region and has enlisted industry veterans from one of the nation’s top universities to lead it.
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The GBA is the Chinese government’s scheme to link the cities of Hong Kong, Macau, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Zhongshan, Dongguan, Huizhou, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing into an integrated economic and business hub.
Dongguan, in Guangdong province, is already the manufacturing hub of China. One out of every four smartphones in the world is made in the city and there are a number of hi-tech enterprises clustered in the city’s Songshan Lake District, including a major research and development facility by tech giant Huawei Technologies, and an integrated national science centre.
The first campus of the Greater Bay Area University – dubbed a potential “MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) of the GBA” – will also be in Songshan Lake District. Construction is expected to be complete and the first students enrolled in 2023.
The institution will be led by top mathematician Tian Gang and administrator Dai Changliang, who have worked for decades at Peking University.
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