JERUSALEM – Israel’s Technion, whose engineering and science graduates have fueled Israel’s reputation as the "Start-up Nation," participated today in a ground-breaking ceremony in China for a joint Israeli-Chinese technology institute aimed at replicating in China Israel’s success in innovation and entrepreneurship.
The former Israeli president Shimon Peres, addressing a crowd of 5,000 attending the ceremony in the coastal city of Shantou, noted that more than 1,000 Israeli companies are active in China. "China is one of Israel’s major partners in technology and hi-tech."
The Shantou project is the initiative of the richest man in Hong Kong, Li Kashing, who visited Israel two years ago with the idea of linking Israeli technological creativity with Chinese resources and ambitions. Donating $130 million to the Technion, which is located in Haifa, he persuaded its leadership to set up a joint institute in China with Shantou University—located in his former home town—that would be a not-for-profit research university granting Technion engineering degrees from bachelor’s to Ph.D.
The university will be known as Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Guangdong is the wealthy province in which Shantou is located and will be a major contributor to the university’s operational costs.
Although Israel’s population is only 8 million, it has more companies listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange than any other country outside the United States—except China, whose population is 1.4 billion. High-tech accounts for 40 percent of Israel’s exports, although it employs only 10 percent of the country’s work force.
The new institute will begin enrollment next year with a few hundred students. When the campus is completed, there are to be 4,000 undergraduate students and 1,000 graduate students. Some teaching staff will come from Israel and the rest will be recruited globally. Professor Aaaron Ciechanover, who shared a Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2004, will be vice chancellor.
"The Technion will contribute its experience in training engineers who know how to apply what they have learned, and turn their knowledge into commercial products that focus on science and technology," Ciechanover said at the ceremony. "Our Chinese partners will contribute their diligence and devotion, qualities that we Israelis are sometimes lacking."
Teaching and research at the new institute will be in English. The Technion is currently recruiting postdoctoral fellows who will be trained to become future faculty members in Shantu. It is also seeking already tenured faculty members. Future faculty will spend their first year at the Haifa campus where they will develop classroom materials and launch research collaborations with the Israeli faculty. These are to serve as a springboard for independent research programs at the Shantoucampus.
The president-designate of the new institution, Li Jiange, said that its aim was to "to continue the fine tradition of the Technion and build a ‘Silicon Valley’ in South China."