Hong Kong has long been renowned as Asia's financial center, but it's lagging behind in terms of innovation and technology. The city slipped to 16th place in a global benchmark of innovation released last year. To provide momentum for development and enhance competitiveness, the SAR's government is taking a series of initiatives to help its innovation and technology industry catch up. Mao Dan reports.

Will there ever be a day when we use a solar-powered car as our main form of transport? A group of students from the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education have been exploring this possibility, with the creation of the SOPHIE Car. They're already on the sixth model of the solar-powered electric car, which can reach a maximum speed of 110 kilometers per hour.

WONG MAN-WAI SOPHIE TEAM MEMBER "We can drive the solar car just with sunlight, or in cloudy or rainy days, on a fully-charged battery, we can go almost 200 kilometers. From SOPHIE 4 to SOPHIE 6, it took us six years. The main challenge was we had to start from nothing, such as the telemetric system, the energy management system and some mechanical parts, we had to learn from full experience."

SOPHIE 6 will conduct a tour on Hong Kong's streets, to showcase how innovative ideas can shed new light on industries, which is why the local government is taking initiatives to drive the trend. It has set aside 10 billion Hong Kong dollars, or 1.2 billion US dollars, for university research funding, and will continue to reduce taxes on enterprise research and development expenditure. The aim is to double the ratio of R&D spending to GDP within five years.

Hong Kong has also been fostering an ecosystem to encourage innovation. One major effort involves developing incubation hubs that provide innovation companies with labs and R&D offices.

ALBERT WONG, CEO HONG KONG SCIENCE PARK "At the science park we now have 640-650 companies, about 260 of them are in our incubation program. We give them help in starting their company, go through milestones, give them laboratories, connect them with the industry and investors. Our target is to promote research and development, so we help the companies with commercialization and development of product, really make it to the market."

Meanwhile, Hong Kong is expected to speed up resource-sharing and talent exchange with the Chinese mainland. This will see the creation of an 87-hectare hi-tech loop between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and a world-class technology hub in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area. Mao Dan, for CGTN, HK.