Tycoon Li Ka-shing has donated US$130 million (HK$1 billion) to an Israeli university to build a facility in Guangdong in partnership with Shantou University.The grant from the Li Ka Shing Foundation is the largest ever to the Israel Institute of Technology – Technion – and one of the most generous in the history of higher education to the country.
At a ceremony in Tel Aviv yesterday to formalize the deal to establish the Technion Guangdong Institute of Technology, the chairman of Cheung Kong and Hutchison Whampoa spoke of a “new world of fluid boundaries” that he finds “fascinating.” He also talked of technology seeming “to wave like a magic wand, bringing new models and opportunities to many frontiers.”
He added: “Our responsibility is to invest in reforms in education that unlock genius and enable the continuing realization of human potential, building a knowledge rich society and securing a sustainable quality of life for all.
“Failing to do so amounts to a crime against the future.”
Among guests in Tel Aviv was Guangdong governor Zhu Xiaodan.
Guangdong and Shantou authorities will set aside 900 million yuan (HK$1.14 billion) to fund construction and for initial operations. They are also making available 330,000 square meters for the campus next to Shantou University.
Technion Guangdong Institute will begin offering undergraduate program in civil and environmental engineering and computer sciences from next year.
Instruction will be English, with
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a faculty comprising researchers and scientists from around the world.
The institute will also join Shantou University in life sciences research to tackle social and livelihood issues, and by 2020 it will offer courses in other engineering-related fields.
One of the world’s top 100 universities, Technion is a pioneer in nanotechnology, life sciences, stem cells, water, sustainable energy, information technology, biotechnology, materials engineering and aerospace.
The amount of money represented by the grant is less impressive than the near certitude that the Chinese government looks with approval on what it very probably considers a long-term investment for China — rapidly shaping up as the key superpower of the 21st century — in the usefulness of Jewish national brainpower.
Li Ka-shing, cited by Wikipedia as the richest man in Asia, operates from an industrial and trading base in Hong Kong. That great city, which, like Macao, the former Portugeuse colonial port near Hong Kong, has special privileges of local control under the Chinese governmental system.
Nonetheless, Beijing either calls all the shots or at least reviews and approves them. Therefore, I consider this investment, in what will be one of the most significant technical and scientific university campuses in the world, as a sure sign that China and Israel shall have a significant and growing relationship. When added to the fact that China shall be constructing a high-speed railway line from Eilat northward through the Arava Valley to Ashdod and Haifa, these associated facts strongly suggest that China shall be treating Israel and the Jewish nation as a significant imperial asset which they will have relatively important reasons to help keep strong and stable.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
This should send a nice loud signal to the EU that if they don’t get rid of their new stupid guidelines about the “Green Lines”, they can take their Whatever-It-Is 2020 research program and shove it up their collective Nazi *sses.