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, this agreement marks a meaningful step toward alignment with Beijing’s national digital strategy, Digital China. Smart Society is that step.
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. The agreement was signed by Liu Liehong, Chairman of China Unicom and Secretary of its Leading Party Members Group. 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.