Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and China Unicom signed two agreements to strengthen strategic cooperation and establish the HKUST–China Unicom Smart Society Joint Laboratory. The partnership will undertake research, technology transfer, and talent development to advance smart campuses, digital government, and Hong Kong’s development into a Smart Society.

香港科技大学（科大）与中国联合网络通信集团（中国联通）今天签署两份协议以加强战略合作，并成立「香港科技大学 – 中国联通智慧社会联合实验室」，就科大建构智慧校园，推动建设数字化政府，促进香港发展成为智慧社会，开展研究及技术转移合作及培养人才。

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, HKUST and China Unicom Establish Joint Laboratory to Advance Smart Society Research and Development (科大与中国联通成立联合实验室 推动智慧社会研究发展), March 10, 2023.

Executive Summary

In March 2023, China Unicom and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology established a Smart Society Joint Laboratory to advance research in smart cities, artificial intelligence, computing power, the Industrial Internet, and digital infrastructure. The agreement offers a revealing example of how concepts associated with China’s national Smart Society strategy can extend into Hong Kong’s innovation ecosystem. The partnership also reflects China Unicom’s broader responsibilities in advancing Cyber Great Power and Digital China. Although the agreement does not establish Hong Kong’s formal adoption of Beijing’s national digital strategies, it demonstrates how institutional partnerships, infrastructure development, and applied research can help carry their concepts into new settings.

Smart Society Crosses into Hong Kong

We are now seeing the first steps to extend the logic of Digital China, and its envisioned Smart Society end state, into Hong Kong’s innovation ecosystem.

On March 9, China Unicom signed an agreement with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) to establish a Smart Society Joint Laboratory (智慧社会联合实验室). While Hong Kong has not formally declared a “Digital Hong Kong” strategy, the agreement offers an important example of how concepts associated with Beijing’s national digital strategy, Digital China, are entering Hong Kong’s innovation ecosystem. Smart Society provides the connection.

Smart Society is one of the Chinese Communist Party’s three elite digital strategies, alongside Cyber Great Power and Digital China. It functions as the Party’s top-level design for New Type Smart Cities and as the theoretical end state for national intelligentization. In this framework, Smart Society is not merely about deploying new technologies, but about building an integrated, data-driven social system.

China Unicom is a natural vehicle for advancing this strategy. The company defines itself as a basic communications enterprise (基础通信企业) serving Party, government, and military systems (党政军系统), with explicit responsibility for supporting both Cyber Great Power and Digital China (聚焦网络强国、数字中国主责). From Beijing’s perspective, extending Smart Society concepts into Hong Kong through a China Unicom–HKUST partnership is a logical and revealing move.

At the signing ceremony, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Innovation, Technology, and Industry highlighted the agreement’s role in advancing cooperation on smart cities, artificial intelligence, and computing power. Each of these areas corresponds to New Type Infrastructure sub-categories and implementation pathways within Digital China, underscoring how Smart Society operates as an organizing framework rather than a standalone initiative.

Although HKUST’s own conceptualization of Smart Society was not publicly detailed, China Unicom’s understanding of the term is well established. Liu Liehong, Chairman of China Unicom and Secretary of its Leading Party Members Group, attended and witnessed the ceremony. In July 2023, Liu was appointed the first head of China’s newly established National Data Administration.

Days later, Liu presided over an enlarged meeting of China Unicom’s Leading Party Members Group to study guidance from the recent Two Sessions, including the government work report and key speeches by General Secretary Xi Jinping. In that meeting, Liu emphasized closer alignment with the Party Central Committee and highlighted the role of China’s elite digital strategies—Cyber Great Power, Digital China, and Smart Society—in achieving the work report’s strategy to increase domestic consumption (内需战略).

The meeting underscored how this growth is expected to occur: through sustained investment in New Type Infrastructure and the multiplier effects of digitalization, networkization, and intelligentization in achieving Chinese Style Modernization. The Industrial Internet was singled out for its role in advancing New Type Industrialization (新型工业化) and integrating the digital and real economies, precisely the domains where Smart Society is designed to operate.

Seen in this light, the China Unicom–HKUST Smart Society Joint Laboratory is not an isolated research initiative. It is part of a broader effort to extend the logic of Digital China, and its envisioned Smart Society end state, into Hong Kong’s innovation ecosystem.

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