Five-Year Plan: First of 3 planned university towns to see institutions move in by 2027/28

Hong Kong will support higher education institutions moving into the first of three planned university towns in its sprawling Northern Metropolis by 2027/28, leader John Lee has said in the city’s first Five-Year Plan speech.

Chief Executive John Lee said on Wednesday that the government will begin site allocation for the Hung Shui Kiu University Town this year and support institutions moving in from next year.

The Hung Shui Kiu University Town will be one of the three such towns planned in the Northern Metropolis project, alongside San Tin University Town and Ta Kwu Ling University Town.

The three university towns will be around 300 hectares each. These “will be connected to the adjacent strategic industry area, distinctive conservation area, recreational, sports and cultural facilities, as well as the surrounding living community,” Lee said in Cantonese.

The total area of the three towns has been expanded to over 1,000 hectares, he said.

Lee also outlined the functions of the three university towns, with the Hung Shui Kiu site positioned as a “cultivation centre for smart manufacturing, applied post‑secondary education, and internationalised talent.”

The San Tin University Town will focus on areas including medicine, life technology, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and microelectronics, Lee said, while the Ta Kwu Ling location will incorporate arts and “blue-green development elements,” he added.

The Northern Metropolis is a sprawling infrastructure project set to transform 30,000 hectares of land in rural Hong Kong near the border with mainland China into a tech hub, providing more homes and deepening the city’s integration with neighbouring Shenzhen.

Local media reported this week that the government will increase the loan quota of HK$10 billion as seed capital to support university town developments.

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Hans Tse is a reporter at Hong Kong Free Press with an interest in local politics, academia, and media transformation. He was previously a social science researcher, with writing published in the Social Movement Studies and Social Transformation of Chinese Societies journals. He holds an M.Phil in communication from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Before joining HKFP, he also worked as a freelance reporter for Initium between 2019 and 2021, where he covered the height - and aftermath - of the 2019 protests, as well as the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020.