Expert highlights the role of colleges in city development

Colleges and institutions have played a pivotal role in boosting a city's innovative development, with such examples as Zhongguancun area, an electronic hub in Beijing, as well as the fashionable architecture surrounding Tongji University in Shanghai, said an expert during an education forum held in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

Titled "The Future of the Learning Ecosystem in Bay Areas: Education, City and Sustainability", this forum gathered some of the top experts in the educational sector to discuss the connection between cultivating talent and sustainable development in cities and regions in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Ha Wei, associate dean of the Graduate School of Education at Peking University, cited nearly 10 examples to highlight how renowned colleges and academic institutions can also serve as incubators for innovative businesses in addition to their traditional role as cultivators of young talent.

One such example is Jinjiang in East China's Fujian province, which attracted some prestigious colleges to establish branches to help the locals develop the integrated circuit industry since 2010.

The rise of China's real estate industry during the 1980s and 1990s led to the emergence of startups launched by some teachers from Shanghai's Tongji University, which is renowned for its engineering and architecture programs. As a result, an area surrounding the university began to attract a lot of architecture design offices, shaping it into a hub for this industry, said Ha when providing another example.

He added that the emergence of Zhongguancun area as a leading electronic hub since the 1980s could be attributed to the presence of nearby colleges such as Tsinghua University, Peking University and Chinese Academy of Sciences.