Greater Bay Area and the National Role

This article is part of the HKU Wild History · unofficial history of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) site's Module 09 on internationalisation, and focuses on HKU's institutional footprint and partnerships in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) and mainland China. Information is current as of July 2026; opening dates, bed counts, floor areas and other figures follow official primary sources, and the status of proposed projects follows the latest official/government disclosures. This site makes no extrapolations about the progress of projects that have not materialised.

Although HKU is a Hong Kong university, it has gradually established medical, research and teaching entities in Shenzhen and elsewhere since the 2010s as part of Greater Bay Area construction. This footprint has risen and fallen with the policy rhythm of the national 14th Five-Year Plan and the Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area; at the end of 2025, a notice renaming an MTR station drew a line under more than a decade of planning for the "HKU (Shenzhen)" comprehensive campus. This article covers each entity and thread in turn: ① HKU-Shenzhen Hospital (HKU-SZH) and its Phase II expansion; ② the HKU Shenzhen Institute of Research and Innovation (HKU-SIRI); ③ the HKU Business School Shenzhen Campus; ④ the "HKU (Shenzhen)" comprehensive campus (from the 2021 MOU to its official cancellation in 2025); ⑤ Partner State Key Laboratories and the InnoHK platform in the Hetao area; ⑥ an overview of research collaboration with mainland China; and ⑦ HKU's position within the broader policy context of higher education in the Greater Bay Area. The medical faculty and Queen Mary Hospital on the main campus are covered separately in ../11-medical-hospital/; the global partnership network is covered in global-partnerships.md; the scale of mainland student enrolment and related policies are covered in ../16-mainland-students/numbers-and-policy.md.

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# 1. The University of Hong Kong–Shenzhen Hospital (HKU-SZH)

# 1.1 Basic facts

Note: site area, gross floor area, total investment and other engineering data are drawn from third-party composite sources (such as Wikipedia entries) and should be treated as leads; authoritative figures are those published by the Shenzhen Municipal Government or the hospital itself. Bed counts and opening dates have been confirmed by HKU's official channels.

# 1.2 HKU's role and accreditations

According to the HKU Mainland Affairs Office^※, HKU-Shenzhen Hospital brings in HKU's clinical expertise, with designated "Centers of Excellence" in cardiology, neurosciences, oncology, orthopaedics, reproductive medicine and prenatal diagnosis, alongside an international medical centre. On accreditation:

• ACHS (Australian Council on Healthcare Standards) accreditation in September 2015^※;
• National Grade 3A hospital accreditation in November 2017^※;
• In June 2018, selection for Guangdong Province's "Top-tier Hospital Development · Dengfeng Plan".

Officially described as one of the first hospitals jointly operated by Hong Kong and mainland China, HKU-Shenzhen Hospital is also the earliest-established and most publicly visible of HKU's mainland entities. In scale, according to a 2021 report by Huxiu^※, the hospital sees roughly 8,000 to 10,000 outpatient visits a day and about 1.7 million a year, broadly comparable to public hospitals of a similar grade in Shenzhen. That volume suggests the hospital is carrying a substantial daily clinical caseload alongside its role as an institutional experiment — it is not merely a symbolic showcase.

# 1.3 A reform pilot: controversy and innovation side by side

From its inception, HKU-Shenzhen Hospital has been tasked with charting a path for mainland public hospital reform. According to a Huxiu assessment published on the hospital's ninth anniversary^※, it was the first public hospital in the country without an establishment staffing quota (编制), an attempt to forge a route distinct from the conventional mainland public hospital model. The pilot status drew considerable controversy early on. The report noted that under the Hong Kong-style general practice model, doctors were encouraged to prescribe as little medication and administer as few drips as possible, with general practitioners triaging patients first; the consultation fee was set at RMB 100^※, and the hospital was at one point decried in public opinion as a "hospital for aristocrats". Some patients complained that they paid the consultation fee and were sent home "without any medicine", clashing with the long-standing mainland expectation of "see a doctor, get a prescription"; the model initially failed to win over patients.

The hospital also made concrete attempts at institutional innovation. Per public reporting^※, HKU-Shenzhen Hospital pioneered the mainland's first "Patient Relations Department", located on the ground floor of the outpatient building with a reception desk and several consultation rooms, staffed by ten full-time personnel with backgrounds in law, clinical medicine or medical social work, dedicated to handling patient complaints and doctor–patient communication. It is one of the earliest cases of a professional patient-relations management mechanism within the mainland public hospital system. From 2016, as the sole pilot site for Guangdong Province's pharmaceutical pricing reform, the hospital led the introduction of bundled pricing for ten common inpatient surgical procedures.

# 1.4 Phase II expansion: from bundled pricing to a "smart hospital" research tower

Per the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily's report that day^※, the main Phase II works at HKU-Shenzhen Hospital began on 8 May 2021, on the northeastern side of the Phase I site, adding roughly 206,300 m² of new construction including an inpatient complex, a teaching and research complex, and supporting spaces such as an underground car park and covered walkways. The same report also noted^※ that Phase II would house two medical centres, each with its own entrance hall, outpatient areas and wards, with operating theatres and the ICU linked at zero height difference to their Phase I counterparts to form a closed-loop treatment system. The works were scheduled for completion in 2025^※, at which point total bed capacity would rise from about 2,000 to roughly 3,000. According to disclosures at Shenzhen's 2025 health work conference, Phase II was among the city's key medical projects slated for completion that year; its research tower was expected to add around 15,000 m² of research space focused on areas such as precision medicine. The Phase II plans also proposed intelligent energy-consumption monitoring and a "growable" mechanical and electrical system, continuing the hospital's founding role as an institutional pathfinder — differentiating itself through research and management innovation rather than hardware expansion alone. As of this site's information cut-off (July 2026), the precise delivery date is a matter for the hospital and the Shenzhen Municipal Health Commission to announce; this site does not extrapolate progress.

# 1.5 First pilot for the "Hong Kong and Macao Drugs and Devices" scheme: on the front line of cross-border medical access

Another concrete instance of HKU-Shenzhen Hospital's "national role" is its status as the first pilot site for the "Hong Kong and Macao Drugs and Medical Devices" (港澳药械通) scheme. According to the National Development and Reform Commission's website^※, in November 2020 nine ministries and commissions, including the State Administration for Market Regulation and the National Medical Products Administration, jointly issued the Work Plan for Innovative Development of Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Regulation in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area, establishing the scheme and permitting eligible medical institutions in the Greater Bay Area's mainland cities to use, under specified conditions, clinically urgent pharmaceuticals and medical devices already on sale in Hong Kong or Macao but not yet approved on the mainland. According to 21st Century Business Herald^※, HKU-Shenzhen Hospital was approved in January 2021 as the country's first — and at the time only — designated pilot hospital under the scheme; on 16 April that year, the first imported drug (anti-D immunoglobulin injection) and the first imported device (a magnetically controlled growing rod) arrived at the hospital and entered clinical use. In August 2021 the policy was expanded for the first time, with the Guangdong Provincial Health Commission announcing an initial list of five designated mainland medical institutions, extending the pilot from HKU-Shenzhen Hospital alone to multiple cities across the Greater Bay Area. The scheme extended the hospital's role from "institutional pathfinder" to a systemic outlet for cross-border healthcare rules in the Greater Bay Area: its function is no longer just importing Hong Kong-style clinical management expertise, but directly serving as the launch site for national regulatory policy.

Financially, according to a Jiemian News report^※, the hospital was reported in its early years to have "lost more than RMB 1 billion over two years", relying on long-term financial support from the Shenzhen Municipal Government and failing to break even; its cooperation contract with the city government was later "unexpectedly extended", with the report characterising the hospital as caught between a "high salaries to foster integrity" staffing model and the operational pressure to sustain profitability. These details of controversy alongside innovation show that HKU-Shenzhen Hospital is not a smoothly running "model project" but a healthcare-reform experiment still being worked out, combining pilot significance with real-world friction — in contrast to the relatively untroubled narrative of HKU's other Greater Bay Area outposts (the research institute and the Business School's Shenzhen campus).

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# 2. HKU Shenzhen Institute of Research and Innovation (HKU-SIRI)

According to an HKU press release^※, the HKU Shenzhen Institute of Research and Innovation (HKU-SIRI) was registered in March 2011 with support from the Shenzhen Municipal Government; its opening ceremony was held on 30 December 2011^※ at the Shenzhen Software Park.

According to the HKU-SIRI website^※, the Institute is an extension of HKU's research into mainland China, with functions covering advanced technology promotion, knowledge transfer, industry incubation, bringing in key laboratories and research centres, and interdisciplinary talent development, all aimed at strengthening cooperation between HKU and the industries of Shenzhen, the Pearl River Delta and the mainland more broadly. The website states that since its founding the Institute has set up a number of research units and secured funding at multiple levels, including national basic research programmes, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Shenzhen municipal science and technology schemes (such as basic research projects and the Peacock Plan). Also launched in 2011 was another HKU channel into Shenzhen via the Chinese Academy of Sciences system: the CAS–HKU Joint Laboratory on Biomaterials was established that year, jointly run by HKU, the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the CAS and The Chinese University of Hong Kong^※ (see "5. State Key Laboratories and Hetao InnoHK" below). The Institute and the joint laboratory represent two parallel routes that together form the institutional landing points for HKU research moving "southward".

HKU's innovation and entrepreneurship presence in Shenzhen extends beyond HKU-SIRI's headquarters. According to an HKU-SIRI news item from 2024^※, on 8 May 2024 the "HKU Youth Science and Innovation Academy" was inaugurated at the Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Hub, positioned as "an innovation and entrepreneurship base with education as its starting point and practice as its means", focused on artificial intelligence, life and health, new energy and new materials, and aimed at building an enabling platform for youth innovation and entrepreneurship across the Greater Bay Area. Operated by HKU and located in Qianhai (rather than Nanshan or Futian), the Academy is another teaching/incubation outpost that has actually materialised, following the Shenzhen hospital, HKU-SIRI and the Business School's Futian campus.

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# 3. HKU Business School Shenzhen Campus

According to the HKU Business School campus page^※, the School (HKU Business School / Faculty of Business and Economics) has established a Shenzhen campus in the Futian district, operating under a "One School, Two Campuses" model focused on teaching, research and innovation and entrepreneurship. As of June 2025, the Shenzhen campus was complete and would offer undergraduate and postgraduate programmes; located in Futian, it houses five research institutes and one innovation and entrepreneurship incubation centre.

According to a Shenzhen News Network report of 14 November 2022^※, the campus is housed in the Futian Radio and Television Financial Centre, and was built as a platform under a strategic-cooperation framework between HKU and the Futian District People's Government. Spanning more than 11,000 m², it opened with five strategic research institutes — financial technology, digital economy, artificial intelligence, smart healthcare and ESG — plus an incubation base named "Meta Valley", positioned as a vehicle for "teaching integration, industry-research integration, talent exchange and innovation and entrepreneurship" between Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Compared with the Nanshan comprehensive campus discussed below — proposed and then cancelled — the Futian campus is modest in scale but has actually been built and is operating; it is one of the few HKU teaching entities in the Greater Bay Area where "what was said was done".

A note on terminology: the HKU Business School Shenzhen Campus (Futian) and the proposed "HKU (Shenzhen)" comprehensive campus (Nanshan) discussed below are two separate projects — the former is the Business School's cross-border delivery of its programmes, while the latter was a standalone comprehensive campus planned at the University level. This site treats them separately and does not conflate them.

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# 4. The "HKU (Shenzhen)" comprehensive campus: from the 2021 MOU to official cancellation in 2025

According to an HKU press release^※, on 6 September 2021, during the Shenzhen–Hong Kong High-Level Meeting and Cooperation Conference, Shenzhen and HKU signed the Memorandum of Understanding between the Shenzhen Municipal People's Government and the University of Hong Kong on Cooperation in Running a University in Shenzhen, signed by the Shenzhen vice-mayor and an HKU pro-vice-chancellor, and witnessed by the then Chief Executive, the Shenzhen party secretary, the Chief Secretary for Administration and the Shenzhen mayor. According to the Shenzhen government's English-language website^※, the campus was planned for the Shibilong area of Xili Subdistrict, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, within the planned area of the Xili Lake International Science and Education City. According to a comprehensive report by 21st Century Business Herald^※, the Xili Lake International Science and Education City covers a planned area of about 60 km²; in 2023 the Shenzhen Municipal Government approved its spatial plan outline, and the area already hosts Tsinghua University Shenzhen International Graduate School, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Shenzhen University's Lihu campus, the Southern University of Science and Technology and the SIAT, among other universities and research institutes. It is positioned as one of the core carrier areas for building the Greater Bay Area international science and technology innovation centre. Had HKU landed in Shibilong, it would have been a neighbour to these institutions; but with official confirmation of cancellation by the end of 2025, HKU has not joined this increasingly dense cluster. Per the MOU's wording, the two sides intended to build "HKU (Shenzhen)" into "a first-class comprehensive research university that upholds the fine academic traditions of the University of Hong Kong, takes root in Shenzhen, serves China and faces the world", with initial disciplines covering sciences, medicine, law, engineering, architecture, smart cities, life sciences, data and intelligence, advanced materials and financial technology, offering both undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes.

# 4.1 Progress compared with contemporaneous "Hong Kong universities heading north" projects

Among the Hong Kong university branch campuses in Shenzhen and the Greater Bay Area contracted around the same period, HKU (Shenzhen) clearly lagged behind its peers:

This table is compiled from public news reports for progress comparison; it is not an official comparison table issued by HKU or the Shenzhen government. Where updated information exists, the official announcements of each institution prevail.

# 4.2 The turning point at the end of 2025: a metro station drops "HKU" from its name

On 17 December 2025, the Shenzhen Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Bureau published a notice adjusting station names, changing the planned name of the Shenzhen Metro Line 13 station "Baiwang HKU Station" (formally named in April 2022 from its working name "Baimang Station") to "Baiwang Station" — the notice page was subsequently removed from the Shenzhen government's website, so this account relies on secondary records. The relevant Chinese Wikipedia entry citing the notice^※ records the notice date as 17 December 2025, notes that the new station name came into use when the line opened on 28 December 2025, and states the reason for the change explicitly as "because the University of Hong Kong has cancelled building a campus in Shenzhen". This is the most direct official confirmation, in publicly available material to date, of the fate of the Nanshan comprehensive campus — delivered through an administrative place-name change rather than a dedicated statement from HKU or the Shenzhen government on the project. As of this site's information cut-off (July 2026), neither HKU nor Shenzhen has issued a formal joint statement on the cancellation or on subsequent arrangements (for example, whether the MOU has been terminated in tandem, or whether the Futian Business School campus is affected). Following this site's principle of not extrapolating the progress of unrealised projects, it simply records the official place-name change and the cancellation reason it cites; the decision-making process and any follow-up arrangements are matters for HKU and the Shenzhen Municipal Government to disclose.

Before this, scattered social signals had hinted at the project stalling: a fieldwork article published in 2026 records the author's visit to the Shibilong area finding no obvious signs of construction, with nearby security guards and site workers alike saying they knew nothing of any construction plans. Such accounts are informal on-the-ground observation from a single source, included here purely as background and not treated as independent evidence; the decisive record remains the official notice from the Shenzhen Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Bureau.

A note on terminology: the HKU Business School Shenzhen Campus (Futian, see "3" above) and the Nanshan comprehensive campus discussed in this section are two different projects — the former is built and operating, while the latter, per the official place-name change, was confirmed cancelled at the end of 2025. This site treats them separately and does not conflate them. The contrast also illustrates a notable split within the "Hong Kong universities heading north" narrative: faculty-level teaching extensions (such as the Futian campus) tend to land faster than comprehensive new-campus projects that require a separate legal entity and an independent campus.

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# 5. State Key Laboratories and Hetao InnoHK: a scientific "national role"

HKU's ties to mainland China and the nation extend beyond physical campuses and hospitals in Shenzhen, to partnership roles in national-level research platforms — platforms that do not depend on new campuses and have landed markedly faster than comprehensive campus projects.

# 5.1 Partner State Key Laboratories

According to HKU's Research Services website^※, HKU currently hosts several "Partner State Key Laboratories", including on emerging infectious diseases (partner: units of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention), liver disease (partner: the Shanghai Cancer Institute / Shanghai Jiao Tong University system), synthetic chemistry (partner: the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry) and biomedical technology (approved in 2024, partnering the State Key Laboratory of the same name at Nanjing University). According to the Innovation and Technology Commission's published list^※, the first batch of partner laboratories, including those on liver disease and synthetic chemistry, were approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2010. The State Key Laboratory on Emerging Infectious Diseases is now led by Professor Guan Yi and Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, and is HKU's core platform linking its infectious-disease prevention and control work into the national research system; during the COVID-19 pandemic in the early 2020s it was also one of the main producing units of HKU's virology research output. HKU also leads the State Key Laboratory on Quantum Photonic Materials as host institution, and participates, as one of "six collaborating local universities", in the State Key Laboratory on Marine Pollution hosted by City University of Hong Kong. This "partner laboratory" mechanism, established by approvals from the Ministry of Science and Technology, is a formal channel linking the mainland and Hong Kong research systems. Unlike the hospital and the research institute — entities funded or jointly run by HKU — it operates closer to a two-way embedded model in which national platforms license Hong Kong universities to operate counterpart laboratories aligned with mainland parent laboratories.

# 5.2 CAS–HKU Joint Laboratories

According to the same website, HKU maintains four "CAS–HKU Joint Laboratories", each with a corresponding CAS institute on the mainland: new materials synthesis and testing (1997, with the Beijing Institute of Physics and Chemistry), chemical synthesis (1999, with the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry), chemical geodynamics (2000, with the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry), and biomaterials (2011, with the SIAT — the Shenzhen institute that co-runs the biomaterials joint laboratory with HKU mentioned above). The four laboratories span 1997 to 2011, pre-dating both the Shenzhen research institute and the Shenzhen hospital. This shows that HKU's institutional cooperation with the mainland research system in fact began before the high-profile "Greater Bay Area campus" narrative of recent years.

# 5.3 The Hetao Shenzhen–Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone and InnoHK

According to the Hong Kong government's "Development Outline for the Hong Kong Park of the Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone", published by the Innovation, Technology and Industry Bureau^※, the Hetao zone comprises the Shenzhen Park (about 3.02 km²) and the Hong Kong Park (about 0.87 km²), and is one of the major cross-border science and technology innovation platforms named in the Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area. The nearly 30 research laboratories of the Hong Kong "InnoHK" initiative at the Hong Kong Science Park, together with key research projects from HKU and other local universities ranked among the world's top 100, have gradually moved into the Hetao Shenzhen Park. HKU participates through the coordinating window of "InnoHK@HKU", forming a third "Greater Bay Area path" parallel to the Shenzhen hospital and the Shenzhen research institute but requiring no new standalone campus: mainland science and technology carriers (Hetao, the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology and others) connect directly to HKU's existing laboratories and teams in Hong Kong, rather than hosting newly built HKU branches on the mainland. The progress of this path also indirectly corroborates the split illustrated in "4. Cancellation of the Nanshan comprehensive campus" above: embedded, mechanism-based research collaborations land far faster than new campus projects requiring independent legal status. The InnoHK platform itself continues to expand: following the two founding research clusters, Health@InnoHK (medical technology) and AIR@InnoHK (artificial intelligence and robotics), a third cluster, SEAM@InnoHK (advanced manufacturing and materials), has completed its selection exercise with eight research projects chosen; the associated research centres are expected to begin operation in phases from the first half of 2026. HKU already has laboratories in the first two clusters; whether it continues in SEAM@InnoHK is a matter to track through the official lists published by HKU and the Innovation and Technology Commission for the relevant year.

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# 6. Overview of research collaboration with mainland China

Beyond the Shenzhen entities and national research platforms above, HKU has broader research collaboration with mainland universities, research institutions and government bodies, including joint laboratories, visiting professorships and joint PhD programmes (for the mechanisms, see global-partnerships.md). On the student side, the mainland exchange programme "China Vision Programme" covers academic courses, research projects, cultural visits, fieldwork and social service; see exchange-and-joint-programs.md.

This section does not attempt to list every mainland research collaboration HKU maintains, to avoid falling out of step with official disclosures for any given year; readers seeking a complete, sourceable list should refer to the HKU Mainland Affairs Office and the official disclosures of individual faculties. Taken together, the sections above show that HKU's ties to the mainland actually span four lines — medical care, research mechanisms, teaching extensions and entrepreneurship incubation — whose progress is not synchronised. Readers are advised to verify each project on its own terms rather than treating "the Greater Bay Area" as a single, uniformly advancing narrative.

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# 7. HKU's position in the policy context of Greater Bay Area higher education

HKU's moves in Shenzhen are not isolated institutional decisions but are embedded in the rhythm of national policy. According to the Chinese government's website^※, on 18 February 2019, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council formally issued the Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area, covering the two Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao and nine Guangdong cities, with near-term planning to 2022 and a long-term outlook to 2035. The Plan describes the construction of the Greater Bay Area as a "national strategy", and higher education cooperation is one of its explicit policy directions: it sets the vision of building several world-class universities by 2035 and "supports cooperation between Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao universities in running schools, and encourages joint development of advantageous disciplines, laboratories and research centres". Under this framework, five of Hong Kong's "world top 100" universities (HKU, CUHK, HKUST, PolyU and CityU) have, over the past decade or so, established or planned branch campuses in the Pearl River Delta: CUHK (Shenzhen) has been operating for years, HKUST (Guangzhou) and CityU (Dongguan) have begun enrolling, PolyU has a project in the pipeline in Foshan, and HKU is the only one confirmed at the comprehensive-campus level to have "cancelled" (the Futian Business School campus aside).

# 7.1 The Pearl River Delta footprints of the five Hong Kong universities: scale and status compared

Table data compiled from the institutions' official websites and public news reports; enrolment figures change with each year's intake, and the authoritative source is each institution's official announcement for the relevant year. The table is intended only to show the overall pattern of divergent progress among the five Hong Kong universities under the policy thread of "running schools in the Pearl River Delta".

This comparison is not intended to pass judgment on HKU's site choices or decisions (this site does not have access to the two sides' negotiating details and cannot determine whether the "cancellation" reflected site conditions, funding arrangements, enrolment expectations or other policy considerations). It simply alerts readers to the fact that HKU's "national role" in the Greater Bay Area in practice comprises several parallel threads at very different stages: medical care (the Shenzhen hospital — earliest to land and the most controversial), research mechanisms (State Key Laboratories, CAS joint laboratories, Hetao InnoHK — steady progress but low visibility), faculty-level teaching extension (the Business School's Futian campus — successfully delivered), and the comprehensive campus (Nanshan — no construction start in over four years, cancellation confirmed at the end of 2025). The four threads have progressed so unevenly that a single phrase like "Greater Bay Area footprint" cannot do them justice.

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# 8. Cross-references

• Global partnership network and international alliances → global-partnerships.md
• Student exchange, double-degree programmes and China Vision → exchange-and-joint-programs.md
• Overseas offices and global presence → overseas-presence.md
• The medical faculty and teaching hospitals in Hong Kong → ../11-medical-hospital/
• Scale and policies for mainland student enrolment → ../16-mainland-students/numbers-and-policy.md
• The HKU Belt and Road Scholarship → hku-belt-and-road-scholarship.md

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