Friday marks the 20th anniversary of Macao's return to China from Portuguese colonial rule. What changes has the city's higher education sector undergone in recent years?

A two-kilometer underwater tunnel connects Macao to a special university campus in southern China's Zhuhai City. It takes students from the University of Macau one minute by car to reach the campus through the tunnel without undergoing complicated border checks.

Based on a land lease, the University of Macau built and is now running its new campus there. Despite being located on the Chinese mainland, the campus is governed under Macao's laws.

Over the past four decades, Macao has made great strides in higher education. It now has 10 tertiary educational institutions, featuring diverse programs and disciplines. Macao is also home to multiple state key laboratories funded by the central government.

For instance, Macao is home to China's only state key laboratory for research on Chinese medicine. It also has key projects in space science and smart cities. In 2015, scientists at Macao University of Science and Technology announced new discoveries about the moon's landscape after analyzing the data from one of China's lunar probes. 

Since 2018, another group of scientists at the University of Macau have been working to build smart traffic systems through processing traffic data across various digital platforms.