Photo: VCG

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) will open a new campus in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, and has recently gained approval from the Ministry of Education (MOE). The move is expected to better integrate quality educational resources of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the Chinese mainland, ahead of the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the motherland.

The Guangzhou campus, co-founded by HKUST and the Guangzhou University, will begin its first semester on September 1. It is located in Nansha, south of Guangzhou and it is adjacent to the Qingsheng station on the high-speed Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link. It takes just 30 minutes to travel there from the Hong Kong West Kowloon railway station, making collaboration between the two campuses very convenient, the Global Times learned from the University's official website on Wednesday.

The university integrates high-quality educational resources from both Hong Kong and the mainland and will aim at cultivating innovative talents with an international vision. It will promote the reform of higher education in China, facilitate the integrated development of education between Hong Kong and mainland, and serve the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

"This vision of transforming the future fits well within the master plan of the Greater Bay Area development, which will serve as a strategic hub to catalyze the combined talents of the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao, and nine cities in Guangdong Province. The initiative will also strengthen knowledge transfer to bridge Hong Kong's gap in high-tech manufacturing through the strong mainland supply chain network," said the university's official website.

The campus for now offers three undergraduate programs, namely artificial intelligence, big data technology and intelligent manufacturing engineering. Another 15 master and doctoral programs are offered, including advanced materials, intelligent transportation and microelectronics.

HKUST (Guangzhou) is the third cooperative university between Hong Kong and the mainland that has been approved by the MOE, following the Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College established in 2005 and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) in 2014.

Another cooperative program, the City University of Hong Kong (Dongguan), is also being set up and will be submitted to the MOE once the preparation works are finished.