China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region on Monday announced the launch of Hong Kong Scholarship for "Belt and Road" Students (Thailand) here in a bid to attract Thai students to pursue undergraduate studies in Hong Kong in the 2017/18 academic year.

According to Hong Kong's Secretary for Education, Eddie Ng Hak-kim, up to 10 scholarships will be offered annually to Thai students who are enrolled in undergraduate programs of publicly funded institutions in Hong Kong for three academic years starting from 2017/18. 

All awardees will receive a scholarship of up to 120,000 Hong Kong dollars (15,462 US dollars) per annum to cover tuition fees, while each financially needy awardee will be provided with a bursary of 50,000 Hong Kong dollars per annum (6442 US dollars), Ng added.

On Monday, Ng reached an agreement on the scholarship scheme with Teerakiat Jareonsettasin, Thailand's minister of education, after a meeting this afternoon, following the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding on education co-operation between governments of the Hong Kong SAR and Thailand last month.

"Hong Kong wants to have some concrete measures to support Belt and Road Initiative, and thus we have this new scholarship scheme, which can further internationalize and diversify the Hong Kong higher education sector and enrich our pool of human capital with talents with global vision and international networks, " Ng said.

Ng added that Hong Kong is home to several outstanding universities and they will continue to consolidate the city's role as a regional education hub.

He also mentioned that the scholarship awardees can act as ambassadors to strengthen exchanges and people-to-people bonds between Hong Kong SAR and Thailand.

Email: lijia@nbd.com.cn