The Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone represents a groundbreaking cross-boundary hub for science and expertise
It goals to strengthen innovation exchanges between Hong Kong and Shenzhen whereas fostering worldwide collaboration and funding
On December 22, 2025, when a gap ceremony of the Hong Kong facet of the Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone was held, this cross-boundary innovation hub represented an unprecedented and special developmental zone within the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). The zone marks the institution of a distinctive science and expertise hub within the HKSAR, utilising mainland abilities and enterprises throughout the boundary and strengthening revolutionary exchanges between Hong Kong and Shenzhen.
During the opening ceremony, Chief Executive John Lee stated that the Cooperation Zone would open the space’s transportation community, promote the trade of mainland science and expertise abilities with Hong Kong’s counterparts, and consolidate the revolutionary connections between the HKSAR and Shenzhen.
A bridge has begun its building linking the expertise parks in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. It will serve, in response to John Lee, as “a landmark symbol for the ‘one zone, two parks’ vision, connecting the Greater Bay Area’s innovation pulse” (South China Morning Post, December 23, 2025, p. A1). The bridge is technologically, socially, and economically important as a result of it is going to join the Shenzhen Technology Park with the Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Park (HKITP), which is known as the Hong Kong park.
The bridge’s price might be shared between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and it’s anticipated to be accomplished in 2027.
The opening ceremony witnessed the attendance of the deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, Xu Qifang, and the director of the Hong Kong Liaison Office, Zhou Ji. Shenzhen metropolis’s deputy mayor, Luo Huanghao, additionally participated in the landmark occasion.
Strategic and political significance
Shortly after John Lee’s obligation go to to Beijing, the place President Xi Jinping requested the HKSAR to align its developmental plan with the nation’s fifteenth Five-Year Plan, the opening of the Hong Kong facet of the Innovation Cooperation Zone is politically important, because it represents how the HKSAR’s science and expertise growth is capitalising on the benefits of science and expertise experience and data in Shenzhen, and how Hong Kong’s science and expertise coverage is facilitating the joint analysis efforts of Hong Kong and Shenzhen. In reality, Xu Qifang stated at the opening ceremony that the park’s growth belongs to the nationwide developmental technique promoted by President Xi.
During President Xi’s go to to Guangdong in November, when he inaugurated the opening of the National Games, he additionally talked about the want for the cities in the Greater Bay Area to cooperate in the areas of technological innovation, infrastructure networks, market integration, and the “soft connectiveness” of guidelines and mechanisms.
Xu Qifang echoed the Chinese President’s remarks by emphasising the significance of Hong Kong strengthening each “soft” and “hard” connectivity. He additionally remarked that Hong Kong ought to consolidate relations with different mainland zones like Qianhai and Nansha to propel the additional growth of the industrial provide chain and to boost the competitiveness of science and expertise innovation, creating a win-win state of affairs in the Greater Bay Area.
The Innovation Cooperation Zone attracted abroad enterprises. More than sixty abroad, mainland, and Hong Kong enterprises signed leases for the two moist laboratory complexes positioned at the Hong Kong park, enhancing the occupancy charge to virtually eighty per cent. The remaining 5 blocks of buildings might be accomplished in 2027, which falls into the first stage of science and expertise growth. The second section’s planning has simply been finalised. The whole space overlaying the two phases of growth will occupy two million sq. metres – an growth of seventy per cent from the Hong Kong authorities’s preliminary plan.
The Hong Kong park is predicted to cowl life and well being expertise growth, synthetic intelligence, and knowledge science. Mr John Lee revealed that the goal of the park is to propel orderly growth, consolidate the innovation and expertise worth chain, and foster cross-boundary and/or cross-border synergy throughout upstream, midstream, and downstream sectors.
Apart from the growth of the Hong Kong park and its connectivity with Shenzhen, the San Tin Technopole is predicted to be developed at a a lot quicker tempo for the sake of attracting extra enterprise funding and offering extra assist for Hetao.
Development challenges and progress
At a time when the mainland authorities are emphasising the significance of creating “new quality productive forces,” the Hong Kong management has began to discover how such “new quality productive forces” will be superior additional by adopting a new science and expertise innovation coverage, cooperating with Shenzhen in a extra intensive method, and tapping into the immense experience and potential of mainland science and expertise enterprises.
In reality, it has taken eight years for the Hong Kong park to be established since an settlement with Shenzhen was signed in 2017 to develop the joint science and expertise park. Critics stated that it took too lengthy for the HKSAR to develop its science and expertise coverage (see Editorial, Ming Pao, December 23, 2025, p. A2). The Shenzhen facet of Hetao has seen extra speedy growth, however the Hong Kong facet has been creating slowly.
In September 2025, the Hetao Institute of Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences, established by famend Chinese-American mathematician Yau Shing-tung, was inaugurated (Hong Kong Standard, September 10, 2025). The Institute is positioned at the Shenzhen park and specialises in utilized arithmetic analysis. Yau highlighted that the Institute had already recruited seventeen prime abilities and that it plans to develop the analysis workforce members to fifty or sixty by the finish of 2025.
More Hong Kong universities are anticipated to maneuver to school campuses in the Northern Metropolis
Despite the building of the bridge linking the two sides of the science and expertise parks, some particulars stay to be hammered out, together with whether or not immigration and customs will undertake a single co-location checkpoint or two totally different customs checkpoints (Ming Pao, December 23, 2025, p. A2). It was reported that a new thought of adopting “a white list” might be used, that means that mainland science and expertise specialists may have their names registered and might be allowed to cross the bridge and enter the Hong Kong park simply.
Sun Dong, the Secretary for Innovation, Technology, and Industry, stated that the flows of abilities, items, and scientific knowledge are actually attaining good progress, and that each Hong Kong and Shenzhen had reached “a basic consensus” on the logistics preparations for cross-boundary organic samples from the mainland to Hong Kong. Obviously, the particulars of technical, scientific, and technological operations should be formulated and carried out meticulously to make sure smoothness and success in cross-boundary science and expertise innovation and collaboration.
Other particulars will must be mentioned, together with the variety of post-doctoral researchers and scientists who will work in the Hong Kong park, and the associated difficulty of mental property rights of revolutionary merchandise. In different phrases, each Hong Kong and Shenzhen should totally utilise the comparative benefits of “one park, two districts.”
Financial and private-sector assist
Sun Dong advised the media that a extra crucial difficulty is to make sure that the Hong Kong park’s growth in the first stage may have sufficient monetary assets (Oriental Daily, December 21, 2025). He revealed that HK$200 billion might be required if the remainder of the Hong Kong park is to be accomplished, and that the authorities can not maintain such a large quantity of funding. As such, private-sector funding might be crucial. The authorities has acquired twenty-seven proposals from the personal sector, that means that public-private partnerships might be crucial for the easy completion of stage considered one of the growth of the Hong Kong park.
As early as June 2025, Sun Dong advised the media that software program and {hardware} must work collectively for the tech zone to achieve success. He stated: “By software, I mean how we can create a favourable business, scientific research, and exchange environment so that top talent and businesses would be willing to move to Hetao” (Hong Kong Standard, June 26, 2025).
Some abroad enterprises have expressed deep curiosity in investing in the Hong Kong park. An government of the Swiss firm Spirecut, Frederic Schuind, stated that he hoped to make use of the base in the Hong Kong park to enter the massive market of Asia (Ming Pao, December 23, 2025, p. A2). It was reported that one-fourth of the sixty corporations in the Hong Kong park are from abroad nations and that they’re deeply in coming into not solely the mainland market but additionally the Asian one.
The Hong Kong park is predicted to offer large and treasured analysis alternatives for the doctoral and post-doctoral researchers produced by native universities. They may have immense alternatives to work with and study from mainland science and expertise specialists, producing a win-win state of affairs in the trade of high-tech abilities from each Hong Kong and the mainland. They can even profit from the experience and data of overseas corporations which have investments and operations in the Hong Kong park.
Overseas funding and analysis alternatives
The expertise dormitory in the Hong Kong park has witnessed the entry and residence of some abilities and workers of the science and expertise enterprises. A couple of eating places have been opened in considered one of the residential buildings. It will be anticipated that when the Hong Kong park is developed additional, extra residents from the mainland, abroad, and Hong Kong might be seen.
In November 2025, Kevin Choi Kit-ming, the Permanent Secretary for Innovation, Technology, and Industry, referred to the Hong Kong park as a “special zone within the special administrative region” of Hong Kong (Hong Kong Standard, November 10, 2025).
He revealed that a German pharmaceutical firm would set up its firm in the Greater Bay Area by leveraging Hong Kong’s worldwide medical requirements, whereas a Beijing-based AI firm was utilizing Hong Kong’s blockchain expertise to attach with the market in Australia. Choi unveiled that the Hong Kong authorities had already allotted HK$24 billion for the preliminary section of the park’s infrastructure and public amenities, other than an oblique funding of HK$14.3 billion for the street and infrastructure community that connects the Hong Kong park with Hetao.
In December, when the Hong Kong park was opened, the new arrivals included a Xiamen sodium-ion battery producer, Hithium Energy Storage Technology, whose cargo was ranked second globally. Its co-founder Wang Pengcheng commented: “After more than a year of evaluation, we firmly chose Hong Kong as our base, as it perfectly integrates international resources for R&D within the industrial strengths of the mainland” (Hong Kong Standard, December 23, 2025). A Shenzhen-based surgical robotic firm named Yuanhua Tech additionally determined to open a second headquarters in the zone, bringing its medical units into native hospitals and making an attempt to develop abroad orders for its amenities. Mainland corporations have been greedy the large enterprise alternatives by means of the Hong Kong park, thereby strengthening the position of the HKSAR as a “super-connector.”
It will be recalled that in February, Xia Baolong, the director of the HKMAO, visited the Hong Kong park in Hetao, listening to Hong Kong officers, resembling Acting Chief Secretary Eric Chan and Financial Secretary Paul Chan, for his or her studies on the growth of the park and the Northern Metropolis. Since then, the Hong Kong authorities has been accelerating developmental work in the Hong Kong park. As such, the opening ceremony of the Hong Kong park in December 2025 was a governmental response to Xia’s aspiration and a report card on how the HKSAR authorities has been accelerating not solely its science and expertise coverage but additionally its real efforts at integration with the Greater Bay Area.
Integration and future growth
The additional growth of the Hong Kong park and the Hetao space will hinge on three components. First, the method in which personal sector funding is fostered and sustained will form the Hong Kong park’s completion in its first section of growth and additionally its future growth. Second, the new Legislative Council might want to shortly scrutinise and approve government-initiated payments that can construct up the necessary transport infrastructure surrounding the Hetao space. In different phrases, the growth of the Northern Metropolis is a part of the additional growth of the Hong Kong park. Third, the San Tin Technopole, positioned south of the Hong Kong park, can even must be accelerated in its building and growth.
In comparability with the Guangdong-Macau In-Depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone in Hetao has some variations and similarities. First, the In-Depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin is creating quickly, with many Macau residents shifting there to reside. Nevertheless, the Hong Kong park in Hetao is positioned within the HKSAR.
The growth of the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone in Hetao alerts the deeper and quicker integration of the HKSAR into not solely Shenzhen but additionally the Greater Bay Area
While the Hong Kong park is a special developmental zone within the HKSAR, the entry of mainland science and expertise specialists is facilitated by administrative measures. Second, the Hong Kong park tends to give attention to science and expertise growth, whereas the In-Depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin tends to give attention to the 4 key areas of Macau’s financial diversification away from its overdependence on the gaming trade, particularly Chinese drugs, conference and exhibition centres, science and expertise analysis, and trendy monetary providers.
The focus of the two special zones within the two special administrative areas has proven a commonality: it emphasises the growth of science and expertise, however the areas of growth in the Macau-Hengqin In-Depth Cooperation Zone are usually a lot broader. Third, private-sector funding is important to the success of each zones, and thereby public-private partnerships are wanted for his or her easy growth. Fourth, each special zones envisage the crucial governmental management of the two special administrative areas, and they belong to an indispensable a part of aligning the two cities’ developmental plans with the nation’s Five-Year Plan to any extent further.
The position of the authorities is crucial to the success of the two special zones in the circumstances of Hong Kong and Macau, one within the HKSAR and the different reducing throughout the boundary with Hengqin, respectively.
Strengthening Hong Kong’s position as a GBA super-connector
In conclusion, the growth of the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone in Hetao has achieved a breakthrough since its opening ceremony in December 2025. It alerts the deeper and quicker integration of the HKSAR into not solely Shenzhen but additionally the Greater Bay Area. It additionally demonstrates the important position of Hong Kong as a super-connector, taking part in the position of a bridge between mainland enterprises and their abroad markets on the one hand, and between abroad corporations and their mainland and Asian markets on the different.
Once some mainland enterprises have established their footholds in the Hong Kong park of Hetao, their analysis collaboration and trade with the Hong Kong facet might be facilitated and fostered, driving the additional growth of Hong Kong’s science and expertise innovation. More Hong Kong universities are anticipated to maneuver to school campuses in the Northern Metropolis in the coming years, offering additional assist to the growth of not solely the Hong Kong park of Hetao but additionally the Shenzhen park of Hetao, resulting in a win-win state of affairs in the co-development of science and expertise in each Hong Kong and Shenzhen. As such, the basis of Hong Kong’s quicker and deeper integration into the Greater Bay Area, together with the alignment of its developmental plan with the nation’s Five-Year Plan, is firmly entrenched.