Hong Kong promotes 'Belt and Road' scholarship in UK

Hong Kong SAR is promoting its Scholarship for "Belt and Road" Students alongside an international education conference in Britain this week, in a bid to attract foreign students to pursue undergraduate studies in Hong Kong, a Hong Kong official said Wednesday.

According to Hong Kong's Secretary for Education Eddie Ng Hak-kim, he talked to British officials about the new scholarship scheme during the conference, gaining very positive feedbacks from ASEAN countries, especially Vietnam.

The scholarship scheme, launched by the Hong Kong SAR government last year to support the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, has been well received by several Belt and Road countries including Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia.

In Indonesia, where the project was first started since last September, 10 scholarships were offered to local students who later have enrolled in undergraduate programs of publicly funded institutions in Hong Kong for three academic years starting from 2016.

Each of the awardees receives a scholarship of up to 120,000 HK dollars (15,462 U.S. dollars) per annum to cover tuition fees, while each financially-needy awardee will be provided with a bursary of 50,000 HK dollars per annum.

This year, after Hong Kong reached an agreement on the scholarship scheme with Thailand, up to 10 Thai students would enjoy the award and begin their undergraduate studies in Hong Kong this September.

"Our next step is to focus on cooperation with Vietnam on this scholarship," Ng said. He believes this program can further internationalize and diversify the Hong Kong higher education sector and enrich the pool of human capital with talents with global vision and international networks.

He also mentioned that the scholarship awardees can act as ambassadors to strengthen exchanges and people-to-people bonds between Hong Kong SAR and countries along the Belt and Road routes.