City University of Hong Kong (CityU) welcomes the enhancement of the support for post-secondary education, especially the gradual increase in UGC-funded research postgraduate places in the next five years, as announced in the Chief Executive's Policy Address released on 19 October. This initiative aligns with CityU’s vision, and we hope that the relevant parties will conduct a comprehensive review of the allocation mechanism for relevant places to ensure a fairer and reasonable distribution of resources and will act better in concert with the government's vision of “enlarging the I&T talent pool to create strong impetus for growth” suggested in the Policy Address.

CityU advocates the spirit of excellence in academics and sports. To name just a few remarkable achievements, we are ranked 1st among local institutions for the most US patents granted for the past six years; our flagship entrepreneurship programme HK Tech 300 is the largest university-based programme of its kind in Asia, leading the development of scientific and technological innovation; and CityU athletes have dominated sports in the tertiary education sector over the past 15 years, winning seven out of 12 Grand Slams in a local sports league.

More than 180 CityU faculty members are listed among the top 2% of the most cited scientists in the world, according to Stanford University earlier this month. This achievement reflects our faculty’s excellent academic standards and outstanding research performance. Compared to faculty size, CityU's percentage of the top 2% of the world’s most highly cited scientists is among the top 100 in the world, while only a very few universities in Asia made the list.

In addition, a determined fundraising effort will help to recruit innovative PhD candidates on top of allocated quotas to support the University's dynamic scientific research teams and thereby contribute more to the development of society.

The Stanford-listed scholars have demonstrated substantial influence in various disciplines by publishing multiple papers ranked according to citation impact. Disciplinary differences in citation norms are taken care of since the list identifies the top 2% of scientists in their specialised research areas.

CityU continues to cement its place among the top global universities by upholding the international standard of “the integration of teaching and research” and “the separation of politics and education”. By focusing on academia, CityU is now well known for promoting forward-looking higher education and is fully recognised as one of the fastest-growing universities in the world.

President Way Kuo would like to take this opportunity to express his gratitude to our world-class teaching and research teams for their contributions to higher education.