Lawmakers have voiced their support for the government’s plan to develop the city as a high-calibre talent hub as they continued the debate on the SAR’s first five-year plan and the latest Policy Address on Thursday.

Brave Chan from the DAB noted that overseas students who are looking to study abroad are no longer only aiming for top institutions in Europe and America but instead considering coming to the SAR as it offers more opportunities.

He suggested the government's attempts to recruit researchers from the world's top 100 universities through its Top Talent Pass Scheme not just be restricted to casting a wide net.

“It should instead choose subjects ranked among the world’s top 100 or research directions where an institution is the strongest," Chan said.

"So, these talents are even more elite. No one university excels in every discipline, but some universities certainly have one particular field in which they are exceptionally strong.”

Education-sector representative Tang Fei said measures being rolled out in the blueprints, such as increasing the number of University Grants Committee-funded postgraduate research places and quotas for scholarships offered to students from outside Hong Kong, showed the government’s determination to lure talents.

“Whether it’s expanding the capacity and enhancing the high level of internationalisation of post-secondary education, or allocating additional resources to build the ‘Study in Hong Kong’ brand, increasing the quotas for the Belt and Road Scholarship – recently, some people from overseas are already asking about the details – as well as the quotas for the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme, all these demonstrate Hong Kong’s determination in building itself as a high-calibre talent hub,” Tang said.

Some lawmakers, meanwhile, focused on enhancing travellers’ experience.

Christine Fong suggested the government look into setting up a one-stop booking platform for tourism that utilises artificial intelligence and real-time data management to handle related matters, such as expense charges as well as the flow of people.

The catering sector’s Jonathan Leung noted that 1.4 million mainland visitors headed to the city during the National Day Golden Week holiday that just ended.

However, he pointed out that they mostly headed to the usual tourism hotspots only and called on the Tourism Board to make use of key opinion leaders and other social-media influencers to redirect visitors to other districts as well so as to ensure that restaurants elsewhere can also benefit.


Edited by Edmond Fong