Hong Kong has a new think tank: Savantas Policy Institute.
Regina Ip, who was the former HK Secretary of Security, is now chairwoman of the board of governors of Savantas (Yahoo Actualités). According to Savantas, HK can be China’s platform for technology transfer and intellectual property rights trading.
Savantas Policy Institute is a think tank that consists of HK citizens that are educated or have working experience abroad and want to channel this knowledge back to the Special Administrative Region. It also wants to develop democracy, read an article about it by Carrie Chan for the HK Standard here. Ip herself has just returned from three years at Stanford University to finish an MA. Read the People’s Daily Online article here.
Why the think tank choose the name Savantas I am not sure. The funny thing is that Savantas is the name of an ominous cartoon figure, created by the late Willy Vandersteen, a Belgian who created also the famous cartoon figures Suske & Wiske. However, the figure Savantas may on paper not be the best person to look after intellectual property rights: In the book ‘De spietatoom’ Savantas stole a secret formula to shrink everybody. Ip’s think tank has exactly the opposite plan for HK’s citizens and IPRs.
