PolyU and the Belt and Road: Regional Partnerships, Training, and the Overseas Project Network

PolyU and the Belt and Road: Regional Partnerships, Training, and the Overseas Project Network

The one-sentence summary: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) uses its Global Engagement Office as a hub to co-found seven major Belt and Road university alliances, including the University Alliance of the Silk Road (UASR, 2015), and has long hosted the Advanced Programme in Power and Energy — having trained over 900 professionals from Belt and Road countries as of 2026.

A list of alliances — UASR, ASRTU, ANSO, UCMSR, BRAIA — an electrical-power training programme that has travelled from Xi'an to Jinan to Hong Kong, and a cohort of young faces from Tanzania, Mongolia, and Uzbekistan: this is the partnership map The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) presents to the world under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It is neither a photograph of an overseas construction site nor a copy of an engineering contract. It more closely resembles a "knowledge and talent" network woven from alliances, training programmes, scholarships, and visiting academics. This piece examines three main threads of this network: the co-building of university alliances, professional training for BRI countries, and the two-way flow of students and scholars. It also honestly details the true shape of so-called "engineering aid".

Information is current as of July 2026; key figures follow official statements and have been locally sourced. The primary unit coordinating these alliances, training programmes, and funding matters is the Global Engagement Office (GEO)^※. For the position of the BRI alliances within PolyU's overall global partnership map, see global-partnerships.md; for the exchange and funding systems that allow students to "go global", see global-partnerships-3.md; for PolyU's operations in mainland China and the Greater Bay Area, see mainland-and-gba.md. This piece does not duplicate those documents; it supplements them by detailing the institutional fabric of the BRI regional theme.

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# 1. What Exactly Has PolyU Done on the Belt and Road?

Let’s first clear up a common misconception: PolyU’s role within the BRI framework is not to build bridges, railways, or power plants in partner countries. It positions itself as a supplier of knowledge and talent. According to the GEO's BRI page, PolyU states it "is dedicated to advancing academic exchanges, research collaborations and partnerships with institutions from the 'Belt and Road' regions^※". In other words, it exports courses, training, advisory opinions, and joint research, not engineering teams.

PolyU’s BRI activities can be grouped into three main lines of action. First, alliance building: it has initiated or joined seven university alliances themed around the Belt and Road, using these alliances as platforms to organise forums, exchanges, and joint research. Second, professional training: it offers training programmes in power and energy, leadership development, and cross-professional advancement for in-service professionals and young people in BRI countries, with "capacity building" as the operative phrase. Third, two-way mobility: on one hand, it uses government and university funding to send undergraduates on exchanges to BRI regions; on the other, it uses scholarships to bring in students from BRI countries to study at PolyU.

These three threads share a single organisational hub — the Global Engagement Office (GEO). The GEO coordinates external partnership agreements, alliance affairs, overseas learning, and BRI funding, and publishes activity updates year by year on its BRI page and news section. PolyU’s senior management is also involved through alliance posts: Professor Ben Young, Vice President (Student and Global Affairs), has represented PolyU at BRI alliance forums on multiple occasions. It is fair to say that PolyU’s BRI participation is an institutional undertaking — written into its internationalisation strategy and executed by the GEO — not a collection of isolated, ad hoc collaborations.

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# 2. Which BRI University Alliances Has PolyU Co-Founded or Joined?

The most concrete skeleton of PolyU’s BRI network is the seven university alliances it participates in. Based on the GEO’s BRI page and a 2023 press release about a forum of seven alliance founding institutions^※, they are verified as follows:

On this list, PolyU carries the most weight in the University Alliance of the Silk Road (UASR). Co-founded by PolyU and Xi'an Jiaotong University in 2015, UASR is one of the earliest higher-education platforms to emerge from BRI cooperation. According to the GEO page, PolyU is a Vice-President of the alliance and was appointed Rotating President at the UASR Forum 2023^※. To serve as Rotating President in an alliance led by Xi'an Jiaotong University and comprising over 150 universities marks a shift in PolyU's BRI role from "participant" to "organiser". During Xi'an Jiaotong's 130th-anniversary celebrations in April 2026, the UASR Executive Council met concurrently, with ten member institutions in attendance.

These alliances are not just lists of names; they are platforms with tangible activities. On 7 July 2023, the GEO hosted the Forum of the Belt and Road Alliance Founding Institutions on campus. Themed "co-building the Belt and Road", it gathered 18 scholars^※ from the founding institutions of the seven alliances (UASR, ASRTU, CPEC Consortium, UCMSR, ANSO, ACNET-EngTech, and the BRICS University League). At the forum, PolyU's role was defined as the co-founder and Vice-President of UASR, and a member of ASRTU, the CPEC Consortium, UCMSR, and ACNET-EngTech. Professor Ben Young, Vice President (Student and Global Affairs), stated at the forum: "PolyU has been playing an instrumental role in supporting the country's Belt and Road Initiative to bring about positive changes in the region.^※" This official line essentially frames the boundaries of PolyU's self-perceived role — that of a supporter and facilitator, not a construction contractor.

Alliance activities did not stop with that single 2023 forum. According to the GEO's BRI news section, the ANSO General Assembly was held in Beijing on 30–31 October 2025, with over 80 delegates and 51+ member organisations in attendance, where PolyU, as a new member, presented its educational outlook. On 12 June 2026, the 2nd University Presidents Forum of the University Consortium of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (UCMSR) was held at Xiamen University, with over 150 university leaders^※ attending to discuss higher education cooperation; PolyU was represented by Vice President Prof. Ben Young. UCMSR now encompasses 73 universities from 20 countries. These forums and councils are the occasions that transform an alliance from a "membership roster" into a real agenda: what university presidents discuss here is joint programmes, mutual credit recognition, and collaborative research — not vague statements of intent.

It is worth noting the thematic division among the alliances: UASR covers broad educational cooperation; ASRTU and ACNET-EngTech focus on engineering and technology; ANSO is built on a skeleton of international scientific organisations; UCMSR corresponds to the Maritime Silk Road; the CPEC Consortium aligns with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor; and BRAIA is dedicated to aerospace. The fact that PolyU, a single institution, spans these seven thematically distinct alliances reflects how its "application-focused, engineering-strong" disciplinary mix dovetails neatly with the cooperative topics of the BRI regions. This "one university, many alliances" layout also means PolyU is not betting on a single BRI region: it is connected to the overland Silk Road led by Xi'an Jiaotong University, to the maritime Silk Road led by Xiamen University, and, through ASRTU, to the relatively independent line of Sino-Russian engineering collaboration.

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# 3. The Advanced Programme in Power and Energy: PolyU's Longest-Running BRI Training

If alliances are the skeleton, then the training programmes for in-service professionals are the most continuous flesh of PolyU's BRI network. The longest-running and most established is the Belt and Road Advanced Programme in Power and Energy.

This programme was launched in 2018^※, co-organised by PolyU, Xi'an Jiaotong University, the State Grid Technology College, and HK Electric, operating under the Silk Road International School of Engineering (SRISE) jointly established by PolyU and Xi'an Jiaotong. It targets power-industry executives, government officials, experts, and academics from BRI countries. Delivered through lectures, seminars, visits, and field trips across multiple locations in mainland China and Hong Kong, the programme is tuition-free (participants cover their own airfare and accommodation). According to a 2020 announcement from the Faculty of Engineering^※, the programme had trained over 200 professionals within its first three years.

The scale has continued to grow since. 2022 marked a peak in participation, with a single cohort of 319 energy professionals from 26 countries/regions completing the training — a record at the time. By 2026, the programme had reached its 9th edition. Themed "AI Technology Empowering New Power Systems", it concluded on 17 April 2026, attracting 45 energy professionals and scholars from 10 Belt and Road countries/regions^※, including those from China, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Indonesia, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa, and the UAE. According to the same GEO news article, the programme has cumulatively trained over 900 professionals from 44 countries/regions since 2018. These "900+/44 countries" figures (GEO, April 2026) are the most frequently cited numbers when PolyU measures the effectiveness of its BRI capacity-building efforts.

Note: The single-edition figure (45) and the cumulative figure (900+) are two different metrics. The former is the attendance for the 2026 edition, while the latter is the total number of training places filled across all nine editions; they should not be conflated when cited. The scale of a single edition is also subject to fluctuation due to the year's theme, the pandemic, and the online/offline format.

Beyond power and energy, PolyU's engineering BRI training also extends into other technical fields. The defining feature of these programmes is this: PolyU provides the "courses" and the "venue"; partners (Xi'an Jiaotong, State Grid, HK Electric) supply industry resources and hands-on scenarios; and the trainees are the people in the power systems of BRI nations who are on track to become decision-makers. What is being exported is not a power station, but a cadre of power professionals who understand the technology and know their counterparts in Hong Kong and mainland China. This is the typical form of "technical aid" in a university context.

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# 4. Other Training for Professionals and Youth: Tanzania and Cross-Professional Advancement

PolyU's BRI training extends beyond power, reaching out to young leaders in developing countries and local professionals alike.

The Tanzania Leadership Programme is a model of "bringing people in for training". According to a 2019 public report^※, this programme is run by PolyU's Institute of Advanced Executive Education. Its first intake enrolled 30 young Tanzanian professionals from sectors including telecommunications, IT, marketing, manufacturing, sustainable development, finance, tourism, and public health. Lasting one week, the programme covered expert lectures, site visits in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and knowledge sharing, focusing on five areas: green manufacturing, urban planning, international trade information technology, tourism, and public health. Visit sites included PolyU facilities, the Hong Kong City Gallery, the Sha Tin New Town, a textile upcycling factory, and the Huawei campus in Shenzhen. The programme was designed to run in rolling cohorts of 30. Dr. Miranda Lou, then Executive Vice President of PolyU, said at the time that the programme aimed to "nurture young talent for the Belt and Road^※," fostering talent development, knowledge transfer, and research advancement. This type of programme packages PolyU's strengths in "urban planning" and "green manufacturing" into a one-week crash course for the future managers of BRI countries.

The Belt and Road Cross-Professional Advancement Programme is a model for "equipping local professionals for BRI opportunities". According to documents released at the end of 2018^※, this one-year programme, with HK$2.3 million in funding from the Professional Services Advancement Support Scheme (PASS) of Hong Kong's Commerce and Economic Development Bureau, and with support from 25 professional bodies, spanned the fields of accounting, finance, insurance, law, real estate, construction, urban planning, surveying, and engineering. It aimed to reach 650 Hong Kong and mainland Chinese professionals and entrepreneurs, delivered through seven workshops and two cross-professional sharing sessions, starting in January 2019. The course content focused on feasibility assessments, risk management, cross-cultural management, dispute resolution, and international project management for infrastructure projects in BRI regions. At the programme's launch ceremony, the serving Chief Executive of Hong Kong noted in a speech that the BRI involves vast infrastructure projects and that all sectors must equip themselves to seize the opportunities. This remark pinpoints the real-world driver for such training: the Belt and Road is a massive infrastructure market, and Hong Kong's professional sectors need training to grasp the soft skills required for these cross-border projects.

Viewed side by side, these two programmes reveal two directions of PolyU's training network: one stream invites young people from BRI countries to Hong Kong to learn from its experience (the Tanzania programme); the other arms Hong Kong and mainland Chinese professionals to go out (the Cross-Professional Advancement Programme). Neither stream touches the construction work itself; both focus on the "people" and the "rules" surrounding projects.

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# 5. Where Does the Money Come From? PolyU and Government BRI Funding

Underpinning the alliance activities, training, and people flows is a two-tier funding architecture — one university-level, one government-level.

At the university level, the GEO operates two dedicated schemes. The first is the Belt and Road Network Initiative Scheme, which provides matching funds to support departments and faculties in organising conferences, seminars, and activities in BRI regions, with a maximum matching amount of HK$200,000 per approved activity^※. Funds are provided on a one-to-one matching basis, and each faculty/department can nominate one activity per year. The second is the K.C. Wong Belt and Road Visiting Fellowship Scheme, which subsidies scholar exchanges between PolyU and institutions in BRI regions, offering up to 10 slots annually^※ for visits typically lasting one to two weeks. The former scheme sustains "activities"; the latter sustains the "comings and goings of people". Both require departmental endorsement and serve as the fiscal levers that turn BRI cooperation from a slogan into projects on the ground.

At the government level, PolyU students on exchanges to BRI regions can apply for the Hong Kong Government's Scheme for Subsidy on Exchange to Belt and Road Regions (SSEBR). According to the GEO's outgoing student funding page, SSEBR is one of the listed funding channels for outbound learning^※. Based on the public descriptions of this government scheme by Hong Kong institutions, the non-means-tested SSEBR has a maximum subsidy of around HK$18,000 per trip, while the means-tested version can be awarded up to two times, with a cap of roughly HK$60,000 (discounted based on the student's assessed financial assistance level). These figures are from the government scheme and are not amounts set by PolyU. One institutional design feature of the SSEBR is that a student who has already received a subsidy for an exchange to one BRI region must go to a different BRI region to be eligible for a second claim, thereby encouraging students to extend their footprint to more BRI countries.

Note: The SSEBR is a Hong Kong Government scheme for undergraduates at all UGC-funded institutions; it is not exclusive to PolyU. Amounts are subject to the government's annual announcement; PolyU's page merely lists it as an applicable channel. Annual deadlines and quotas for the two university-level schemes are subject to the GEO's annual announcement (e.g., applications for the 2026 Network Initiative Scheme had already closed).

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# 6. Bringing BRI Talent In: Scholarships, Rehab Exchanges, and Central Asian Delegations

PolyU's BRI engagement is not a one-way street; the "bringing in" of talent has noticeably intensified over the past two years.

The China Merchants Belt and Road Scholarship is a recently established channel for attracting talent. According to GEO news, this scholarship was set up by September 2025^※, targeting students from BRI countries studying for master's degrees at the PolyU Business School. The first four recipients hailed from South Korea, Rwanda, Kyrgyzstan, and Malaysia, and were enrolled in programmes such as the Master of Business Administration and the MSc in Global Supply Chain Management. The inclusion of names like Rwanda and Kyrgyzstan on the PolyU Business School intake list is, in itself, a concrete facet of how the BRI talent network materialises on the ground.

Two-way exchanges in professional disciplines are also developing. According to GEO news, exchanges between PolyU's Department of Rehabilitation Sciences and the Mongolian National University of Medical Sciences have become routine: from May to June 2025, 15 occupational therapy students travelled to Mongolia for conference presentations, workshops, and clinical immersion; from January to February 2026, a Mongolian group of 12 students and 2 faculty members made a return visit to PolyU. At the Belt and Road Youth Development Summit in December 2025, 28 PolyU undergraduates from BRI countries participated, with two of them (from Nepal and Mongolia) attending the summit. These names and nationalities are the footnotes that mark the transformation of "BRI talent" from an abstract slogan into specific, enrolled students.

Institutional-level outreach is signposted by high-level delegations. From 31 May to 5 June 2026, a PolyU delegation led by then Provost and Senior Vice President Prof. Wong Wing-tak visited Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where they signed a student exchange memorandum of understanding with Nazarbayev University^※ and forged cooperation with New Uzbekistan University and the "El-Yurt Umidi" Foundation. The latter covered professional internships in fields like cybersecurity, robotics, and unmanned aerial vehicle systems, as well as scholarships for Uzbekistani students. Central Asia is the heartland of the Silk Road Economic Belt. By signing exchange and internship MoUs here, PolyU has filled a gap where its BRI efforts were previously skewed towards engineering training and relatively weak in student mobility.

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# 7. The Joint Research Matrix: The "Scientific Research" Strand of BRI Collaboration

Beyond training and talent, PolyU's BRI network has a frequently overlooked research strand. This takes shape not through individual overseas projects but through "joint research platforms + themed academic conferences".

At the platform level, the Silk Road International School of Engineering (SRISE), co-established with Xi'an Jiaotong University, not only supports the power and energy training but also serves as a vehicle for joint research and joint supervision in engineering disciplines. Meanwhile, ANSO (the Alliance of International Science Organizations), a science organisation alliance spearheaded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and covering 96 member institutions across 59 countries, provides PolyU with a gateway to connect its research agenda with the scientific community along the Belt and Road. PolyU's decision to join ANSO in November 2023 was precisely aimed at embedding its applied research into this BRI scientific collaboration network at the level of international science organisations.

At the conference level, PolyU uses themed academic symposia to stimulate BRI research exchanges. According to the GEO's BRI news, from 15 to 18 May 2026, PolyU's Department of Applied Physics (Faculty of Science) co-organised an Advanced Dielectric Materials Symposium with the Dielectric Committee of the Chinese Physical Society. Over 100 scholars^※ attended, from mainland China, Russia, Australia, Thailand, and Hong Kong. A symposium of this kind signs no engineering contracts and brings with it no capital flow, yet it is the starting point for long-term collaborations among BRI researchers. A co-authored paper or a joint project often grows out of just such a conference room. PolyU's BRI research relies precisely on this slow-burn approach — "platforms nurture relationships, conferences start collaborations" — rather than a one-off, project-tendering exercise.

It must be honestly stated that PolyU has not published a unified list of "Belt and Road joint research projects". Its BRI research is largely scattered across specific collaborations in various departments, alliances, and conferences, making it difficult to encapsulate with a single number. Any claim that casually attributes a specific overseas research achievement to a "PolyU BRI project" should be treated with scepticism unless supported by a traceable project source.

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# 8. A Finding of Nothing and a Clarification: Is PolyU's "Engineering Aid" Construction Contracting?

Let’s return to the misconception raised at the beginning of this article: the phrase "BRI + engineering + aid" easily conjures the image of PolyU building bridges, railways, or power plants in partner countries. Checking public sources, there is no record of PolyU acting as an engineering contractor for overseas BRI infrastructure projects.

This is not to say PolyU has "no involvement in engineering", but rather that its involvement operates on an entirely different plane. The physical infrastructure along the Belt and Road — such as the China-Nepal cross-border railway or projects in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor — is built by Chinese state-owned engineering enterprises under models like EPC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction). That is the battlefield of construction firms. What a university of applied learning like PolyU provides are the knowledge, talent, and rules services surrounding such projects: power and energy training (Section 3), leadership training in urban planning and green manufacturing (Section 4), training in the feasibility assessment and dispute resolution for cross-border projects (Section 4), as well as joint research and advisory opinions. In a single phrase, PolyU works on "the people and the methods behind the project", not "the steel and concrete of the project itself".

Why this distinction matters is that it determines how PolyU's BRI "contributions" should be correctly understood. Disciplines such as urban planning, structural engineering, surveying, and rehabilitation science at PolyU are deeply involved in BRI topics at the advisory and training level, but equating this with "PolyU building roads and bridges overseas" is a misreading. The honest formulation is this: PolyU's BRI engineering role is one of capacity building and talent cultivation, carried out through alliances, training programmes, visiting fellows, and joint research, not construction contracting. Any statement involving specific overseas infrastructure construction should not be grafted onto PolyU’s name unless verified by official PolyU records or reliable project documentation.

As for whether there is controversy surrounding BRI cooperation: the BRI indeed attracts international debate on issues such as debt and geopolitics. However, those are macro-level concerns situated at the level of states and contracting enterprises, not on the same plane as a university's training and academic cooperation. This article formulates its conclusions only on the basis of PolyU's verifiable institutional actions, does not import those macro-level disputes, and does not pass judgement on any side.

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# 9. Understanding PolyU's BRI Network at a Glance

At its core, PolyU's BRI network is what happens when an application-oriented university translates its disciplines — engineering, planning, business, and rehabilitation — into courses, advisors, and talent pathways that are useful to BRI countries. It does not pave roads, but it trains those who will. It does not sign construction contracts, but it signs MoUs for student exchanges and joint research. From co-founding UASR in 2015 to signing internship memoranda in Central Asia in 2026, this network has grown over a decade from "joining alliances to add a name on the wall" into a substantive entity with training, funding, and two-way human flows. This, perhaps, is the most fitting way for a university to participate in a national initiative.

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