Firms long established in Hong Kong were among 30 “strategic enterprises” that finance chief Paul Chan has said were attracted to the city following the government’s move to draw international innovation and technology (I&T) companies. Most of them came from mainland China.
The city’s leader John Lee and Chan held a ceremony with executives from 20 of those companies on Wednesday, signing partnership agreements to mark both sides’ commitment to working together to boost the development of I&T in Hong Kong.
Among the 30 companies, nearly 80 per cent came from mainland China, Chan said when he met the press after the ceremony.
“We believe the companies should not be defined as where they were registered. Most companies present today are running international businesses, ” the financial chief said in Cantonese. “But if we classify them based on places of registration, around 70 to 80 per cent are mainland Chinese enterprises.”
Chan added that the government had not provided any special incentives for those companies, saying the advantages of the One Country, Two Systems model had attracted them to set up or expand their business in the city.
“When a company comes to Hong Kong under the framework of One Country, Two Systems, there is freedom of information flow. In the field of AI, data can flow freely,” Chan said in Cantonese.
The authorities did not reveal full list of the 30 strategic enterprises. Those attending Wednesday’s ceremony included mainland Chinese companies such as Lenovo, JD, Dmall, and Yuanhua Tech, as well as US-registered biopharmaceutical company Sirnaomics and multinational pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.
Tech company Lenovo was listed in Hong Kong in 1994 and already has an office and stores in Hong Kong, while JD was listed in Hong Kong in 2020.
Chan said that not all 30 companies were newcomers to the city, but he did not reveal the percentage of those that had an existing presence.
100 out of 272
Chief Executive Lee announced during his maiden Policy Address last year that authorities would take a series of moves to attract capital and enterprises to Hong Kong, including setting up a new department Office for for Attracting Strategic Enterprises (OASES) and the Mutual Invest Fund to invest in potential companies.
Apart from OASES, InvestHK, a department for foreign direct investment, attracted 277 companies to develop their business in Hong Kong this year, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Algernon Yau said in mid-September.
The top three origins of those companies were mainland China, with 100 fires, the United Kingdom with 38, and the United States with 22, InvestHK said in response to enquiries by HKFP.
Invest HK did not reveal full list of the companies or their scale and industry sector, citing commercial confidentiality.
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