Sound policies and an attractive living environment have drawn overseas scholars to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to participate in the region's bid to become a world-class education hub. Oasis Hu reports from Hong Kong.
Favorable talent introduction policies, especially tax reductions, have enabled the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to attract more foreign scholars and researchers, further driving the cluster's efforts to become an international hub of higher education.
Since the Greater Bay Area released its development outline in February 2019, talent introduction in the region has been enhanced to the level of a national strategy, said Tang Tao, president of Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College (UIC).
Founded in 2005, the school is the nation's first educational institution where Hong Kong and mainland universities cooperate. A result of cross-boundary educational collaboration, the university enjoys a degree of benefits in introducing overseas professionals, such as in accommodation and daily lives. The outline pledged even stronger and more-comprehensive support in this area, especially in tax concessions, which are a big attraction, Tang said.
The outline has also boosted local governments' confidence and courage to offer greater support in attracting overseas professionals, said Ricky Lee Shi-wei, one of the founders of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), which is expected to start operations in September. The acting dean of Systems Hub, Lee has also participated in the global recruitment of teachers for the university.
In the past three years, the Greater Bay Area has launched a series of policies to improve the accreditation standards for high-level foreign professionals and make it more compelling for them to work and live in the region.
In 2019, Guangdong province issued a favorable tax policy for overseas professionals working in nine mainland bay area cities. If the amount of individual income tax paid by the professionals exceeds 15 percent of their taxable income, the excess part shall be subsidized by the governments. In other words, a person with an annual salary of 1 million yuan ($155,000) can receive tax subsidies of about 100,000 yuan each year.
These initiatives have proved to be effective. According to Tang, since 2019, UIC has brought in more than 150 teaching staff members from world-renowned universities such as Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, and Princeton.
High-end foreign professionals working in Guangdong accounted for 20 percent of those in the whole country, a senior Guangdong official in charge of tech development said in early 2022.
Carlotta Viti, an Italian-born linguistics professor of UIC, has enjoyed such favorable policies since joining the university in 2019.
Previously, she had worked in Germany, Turkey, and Switzerland. Attracted by the bay area's convenience and potential, she accepted an offer from UIC.
She said her decision to take the offer was the right one. As the director of the foreign languages center of UIC, she manages 11 teaching staff members in a cosmopolitan work environment. Nine of them are from Spain, France, and South Korea, and two are from China. All of the school's teachers and administrative staff speak English fluently.
Compared with her previous jobs in Europe, she said that her salary has increased, and described the living and working conditions as satisfactory. She lives alone in an apartment a 30-minute ride from the university, and the school provides a housing allowance and free bus rides.
She enjoys the bay area's warm weather, sophisticated transportation and logistics, order, and safe social environment. Responsible for recruiting teachers to her center, she said that these factors are competitive on a worldwide basis.
Since COVID-19 broke out in 2020, the professor has stayed in Zhuhai and has returned to Italy only once, for a family visit.
After successfully controlling the pandemic, Zhuhai has seen small-scale outbreaks again this year. She hopes the virus can be beaten soon so that people can resume their normal lives. She said her experience working in China has exceeded expectations, and she hopes to extend her stay.
Contact the writer at oasishu@chinadailyhk.com
Link: https://www.chinadailyhk.com/epaper/pubs/chinadaily/2022/04/22/06.pdf
