Recently, the 2020 GuangdongHong Kong-Macao University Alliance Online Annual Meeting and Presidents Forum was held to discuss how to continue to promote collaborative innovation and education development in the Greater Bay Area after the pandemic. Representatives of related government departments and universities in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao participated in this meeting.

Xu Yongji, executive deputy director of the Office of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan Affairs at the Ministry of Education, said that the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao University Alliance should play a greater role. The Alliance should be actively involved in national development and play a leading role in the overall pattern of the opening up of the education sector, helping the GBA become a beacon in this regard. It is also necessary to continuously improve professional capabilities in various disciplines and cultivate more professionals in the GBA, which could also build the GBA into a beacon for the cultivation of talent. In addition, we should actively explore innovation mechanisms, and operation models and environments with international characteristics, and we should build a number of demonstration bases, all aiming to build the GBA into an innovative and entrepreneurial beacon.

Luo Jun, president of Sun Yat-sen University, recalled the remarkable results of last year. The Alliance has positively promoted exchange and cooperation between universities in the GBA and has contributed to realizing the deep integration of the scientific and educational spheres. It has also carried on work regarding scale, system, cooperation, innovation and integration. Facing the challenges brought by COVID-19, the Alliance has forged ahead, transformed its vision and innovated with the ways people work, which has brought about new achievements during the period of epidemic prevention and control. Luo emphasized that the Alliance should highlight the importance of basic research, pay attention to innovation in the cooperation between member universities and different Alliances, and strengthen the openness of Alliance development.

The Guangdong-Hong KongMacao University Alliance aims to build a high-level platform for universities in these three regions to exchange and cooperate. Based on this Alliance, higher education cooperation in the three regions can deepen its cultivation of talent, scientific research and innovation while boosting social services and education construction.