Bulletin No. 2, 2018

Taking CUHK’s Educational Philosophy Northward 05 to teaching and research collaboration and student exchange. Further, riding on the rapid growth of the country’s spending on education and research, technological innovation has been thriving, with many new high-tech enterprises moving in. Tech giants Tencent and Huawei, for example, chose their headquarters in the city. A better location to build a new university to further the missions of CUHK cannot be found. From the perspective of student recruitment, in 2018 alone, the mainland’s National College Entrance Examination ( Gaokao ) saw 9.75 million exam-sitters. Guangdong alone contributed to 760,000 candidates. This figure is more than 10 times the number of candidates taking the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education exams each year. ‘Given the larger pool, even if we take in only 1% of the high-achieving students, the enrolment number is already quite remarkable. There is no cause for worry.’ Strategic Location That CUHK (SZ) is located in Shenzhen is the fruit of strategic thinking. Prof. Xu Yangsheng , President of CUHK (SZ), explained, ‘In the conceptual stage of the project, we carried out research on the states of development of higher education and research in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, economic hubs of the Bohai Sea Rim, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, respectively, and discovered that they were very uneven. Beijing had 30 key universities and more than 200 national research institutes. Shanghai had over 20 and 60, respectively. But Shenzhen has only Shenzhen University and no national research institute. Even the whole of Guangdong did not fare better. Clearly the Pearl River Delta was faced with the gap between higher education provision and technological development.’ Shenzhen’s proximity to CUHK’s Shatin campus is a natural advantage At the main entrance to CUHK (SZ) on the Longxiang Avenue of the Longgang District, the visitor is immediately greeted with a colossal stone slab inscribed with the name of the university. The only difference from its Shatin equivalent is the addition of ‘Shenzhen’. The four totemic pillars so familiar to the CUHK community are placed to the right of the stone slab, while those in Shatin are placed to the left. CUHK (SZ) has two other entrances: the East Entrance has a similar slab bearing its Chinese name; the slab at the New South Entrance bears its English name. A Chinese University in Shenzhen