AKIPRESS.COM - One of the heads of the Nazarbayev University has said her institution is considering offering scholarships to Hong Kong students in a bid to strengthen connections with the city under “One Belt, One Road” initiative, reported South China Morning Post.

Professor Loretta O’Donnell, Vice Provost of the University, was speaking at the Nurturing Talent and Building Capacity in Supporting the Belt and Road Development Forum, organized in Hong Kong.

“The spirit of ‘One Belt, One Road’ is about knowledge, testing assumptions and finding what unites us,” said O’Donnell. “What can possibly be wrong with that? There will be business opportunities, intellectual opportunities and research opportunities.”

O’Donnell said Hong Kong has been offering scholarships to Kazakhstani students, so the University wanted to do the same for students there. But she said details about the plan have not been worked out yet.

O’Donnell said the University only had 14 out of some 4,000 students from overseas. The institution plans to increase the number of international students to about 20 percent of the total enrollment by 2020.

She added that Hong Kong can benefit too by attracting Kazakhstani students.

“[The scholarships] are very generous, very timely and I think very carefully constructed, because the best students in Kazakhstan, I would argue, are as good as the best students in Hong Kong and in China,” O’Donnell said. “We think we’ve got human capital, and I think the government of Hong Kong knows that.”