This aerial photo taken on June 10, 2023 shows the night view of the urban areas in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong province. [Photo/Xinhua]

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published the Global Innovation Index 2024 top 100 science and technology clusters on Tuesday, among which the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou cluster continued to rank second globally for the fifth consecutive year.

A spokesperson for the HKSAR government welcomed the ranking, saying that it continues to give high recognition to the leading position of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) in the global innovation and technology (I&T) field.

Hong Kong will continue to actively promote I&T development by strengthening basic research capabilities, enhancing the local I&T ecosystem, accelerating the transformation and commercialization of research and development outcomes, and promoting new industrialization to accelerate the cultivation of new quality productive forces in accordance with local strengths, the spokesperson said.

Hong Kong will also strive to leverage its own advantages and strengthen I&T collaboration with GBA sister cities, thereby jointly building a more comprehensive and globally competitive I&T industry chain, and making new and greater contributions to the country's high-level self-reliance in science and technology, the spokesperson said.

The WIPO examines the density of patent-filing and articles published in scientific research journals to identify and rank the leading geographical areas in global sci-tech invention and innovation activities. For the ranking this year, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou cluster filed 2,303 patent cooperation treaty applications per 1 million inhabitants from 2019 to 2023 and published 3,469 scientific articles per 1 million inhabitants from 2018 to 2022, both increasing from the previous cycles.