Chief Secretary Chan Kwok-ki chaired the first meeting of the Committee on Education, Technology & Talents today.

Secretary for Education Choi Yuk-lin, Secretary for Innovation, Technology & Industry Prof Sun Dong and Secretary for Labour & Welfare Chris Sun attended the meeting.

The committee discussed the work plan on promoting Hong Kong into an international hub for high-calibre talent, targeting the manpower demand of Hong Kong's strategic positioning of “eight centres”.

It will adopt three major strategic directions to enhance the system, aggregation and synergy of policies as well as the cross-bureaus co-ordination in the work on promoting integrated development of education, technology and talent.

The strategic directions include attracting high-quality innovation and technology (I&T) talent, leading the I&T sector, establishing an international education hub, and enhancing talent admission schemes and talent services by the strategic positioning of industries in Hong Kong.

The committee agreed to focus on following up and implementing some key areas of work in the coming year, with a view to enhancing the system interface in the short term.

The key areas are: enhancing the General Employment Policy and the Admission Scheme for Mainland Talents & Professionals; introducing a mechanism under the Quality Migrant Admission Scheme to actively invite top-notch talent to come to Hong Kong; reviewing the Technology Talent Admission Scheme; seizing the opportunity brought by the commencement of operation of the Hong Kong Park of the Hetao Co-operation Zone next year; and reviewing the prevailing Immigration Arrangements for Non-local Graduates and education matters of dependents who are children of incoming talent through talent admission schemes.

Mr Chan said in formulating the macro policy directions for education, technology and talent, the committee will build on the strategic positioning and advantages of the “eight centres” and make holistic plans to strategise talent chains, innovation chains, industrial chains and capital chains to drive technological innovation, industrial innovation and the co-ordinated development of human resource supply and demand.