Public grants to academic research unaffected by gaming revenue drop

Economic recession in the gaming industry has not dampened the government’s financial support for the research projects of local tertiary education institutes so far, said Prof. Zhang Shu Guang, Senior Vice President of the Macau University of Science and Technology (MUST) who also heads the university’s Institute for Social and Cultural Research (ISCR).
The university’s research unit revealed the first of several rounds of results yesterday afternoon, which included studies into the Luso-Chinese relationship, research on the historical maps of the city and the compilation of global documents about Macau.
Speaking about any possible pressures that dwindling gaming earnings have had on the university, Zhang admitted that college authorities were initially concerned with whether or not the continuously plummeting gaming revenue would take a toll on public grants to academic research.
“Currently, we haven’t received any obvious information regarding whether support for [academic research] would decrease. We’re still cautiously optimistic [about it],” said the university’s rector, adding that most government departments have always been supportive of the academic efforts.
According to Zhang, the university has faced no major obstacles in terms of launching research despite some projects having been scaled down due to fiscal considerations. However, the school also had its own supporting body to financially initiate their research.
Among the three examples of research that took two to three years to reach a preliminary stage, researchers who worked on a map project picked 50 precious historic maps out of a total of 500 collected from western countries that best illustrated the appearance of the city from the fifteenth to nineteenth century. It was the first-ever publication with a high level of accuracy in the city’s map collection. It also confirmed Macau’s vital role in the past as a global commercial platform. Another research effort focused on consolidating local historical database with information from other countries. Staff reporter