Speaking on RTHK’s Backchat programme, Nicholas Chan said Chief Executive John Lee’s visit to Zhejiang is significant as the province accounts for nearly 10 percent of China’s gross domestic product.
Chan also believed there will be closer cooperation between the SAR and Zhejiang now that a memorandum of understanding has been signed for 51 projects that cover 13 key areas like smart cities, artificial intelligence, fintech and biotech.
He also believed that Hangzhou’s “Six Little Dragons” – DeepSeek, Game Science, Unitree Robotics, Deep Robotics, BrainCo and Manycore Tech – can raise funds globally via Hong Kong, citing the SAR’s role as a “super connector” and “super value-adder”.
“You look at what’s happening there in our government plan for the coming year,” Chan said.
“It is about how we develop technology and industries together in a synchronized way so that you don’t have technology that is just built for interest but which no one uses, and industries dying for some technology that doesn’t exist.
“We will be more synced up, more joined up, and we’ll be able to unleash more power, particularly in these testing geopolitical times,” he added.
Chan said Hong Kong is an ideal location for companies to demonstrate robotics technology to the world as countries like the United States have a strong belief in Hong Kong’s compliance law.
“And so if we can build this, demonstrate to the world through Hong Kong, then these technologies would have a stronger reach throughout the world and be able to improve lives generally throughout the world,” he said.
Speaking on the same programme, artificial intelligence consultant Raj Shroff said Hong Kong, as an international city, is also attractive for high-tech firms, as the companies can attract foreign capital and customers into the SAR, while the city’s universities also bring in a lot of talent locally and from around the world.
Hong Kong, he said, has laid out a welcome mat for tech firms to operate here and the talent acquisition and sharing would make the SAR a larger technology hub.
