ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a case in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), China, in higher education, the establishment and development of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and its unprecedented achievement of becoming an internationally ranked research university within a decade of its establishment in 1991. It describes the fundamental attributes of HKUST: its placement in several of the global rankings of universities; and its roles, goals, and objectives. HKUST facilitated the creation of a robust scholarly community adjoining a globally emergent and reformist China. In this sense, HKUST identified a niche within the Hong Kong system, by establishing a new international university and projecting its vision far beyond that system and into mainland China, especially signified by the new Southern University of Science and Technology under planning in the adjacent Shenzhen Special Economic Zone.
