Hong Kong should build AI plan around ‘competitive’ strengths, industry leaders say

Hong Kong should draft a five-year plan that includes an artificial intelligence (AI) focus that is not too broad, makes the most of its core strengths and attracts the best talent to develop the sector, industry leaders have said. At the South China Morning Post’s China Conference 2026 on Tuesday, titled “Intelligence at Scale: Hong Kong’s AI-Powered Future”, speakers at two panel discussions considered how Hong Kong could deliver on its AI aspirations and the city’s readiness as a launch pad for mainland Chinese enterprises. Zhang Xiaoyan, vice-president of the China Centre for Information Industry Development, an institution under China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that as Hong Kong formulated its first five-year plan, it should refrain from drafting technology plans that were too broad. “Hong Kong, because it’s relatively smaller in terms of economy, so your first five-year plan should not be a very broad one. Just like the mainland, especially in the AI sector, you do not need to cover all the frontier technologies,” Zhang said. “You can pick the [strongest or] most competitive scenarios in Hong Kong, such as urban development, healthcare or finance, instead of manufacturing, because manufacturing in Hong Kong accounts for only 1 per cent of your general gross domestic product [GDP]. So let us learn from the mainland, but also keep [in line] with Hong Kong's features and advantages in AI development.” Zhang added that the city should establish pilot programmes for cross-border data transfers to complement the mainland by building high-level industry data sets in collaboration with mainland partners. Nicholas Chan Hiu-fung, a lawmaker and member of the Cyberport board of directors, said the city was increasing its computing infrastructure amid an evolving “digital workforce” that deployed agentic AI to perform actual tasks, as opposed to merely relying on generative AI to answer questions. “From what I understand, most of the computing power that we’ve just recently built up has been snapped up by a lot of people demanding to use them, [but] we still have some left,” Chan said, urging companies and education institutions to “grab” computing power “as soon as you can”. Another speaker, Hendrick Sin, a deputy to the National People’s Congress and president of the Hong Kong Internet Professional Association, noted that on top of China’s 15th five-year plan, Hong Kong was formulating its own five-year blueprint to ensure it pursued the best policies and attracted the right people. “We are making sure we are not lagging behind and we see that with the right schemes and the right policies in place, we have attracted lots of talent. So we see a lot of overseas and mainland scientists and entrepreneurs are coming to Hong Kong to take part in the AI development,” he said. Asked how Hong Kong could resolve the missing link between clinical trials and commercialising inventions, Sin pointed to Hong Kong’s five universities that topped global rankings and their contributions to research. “The basic research is strong, we have very good professors [and] scientists, we have numerous research papers, I think they are cited many, many times globally,” he said. Sin added that there were centres that helped or worked with these scientists, such as the government’s innovation initiative InnoHK, that collaborated with multinational universities to develop technologies and products. He noted that the city offered robust infrastructure and professional services, with intellectual property protections that were globally recognised, biotechnology investors, and mechanisms that fast-tracked company listings on the local stock exchange. When asked to share her experience of commercialising inventions such as AI software or robots, Jeanne Lim, founder and CEO of BeingAI, said that developers could achieve international compliance by aligning their platforms with mainland regulations on human-AI interaction. “Obviously, [mainland] China is next to Hong Kong, it’s a big market, and it values human engagement, and interestingly, it has the first policy about human-AI interaction in the world,” she noted. “So, if we have a robust way to meet those requirements, we’re actually OK around the world, which is very different from what people expect, right?” At a separate panel about Hong Kong’s role as a launch pad for mainland firms, Bank of Communications’ general manager of corporate business management Marcus Wong Kin-ting noted a strategic shift in recent years, saying businesses had pivoted away from seeking US dollar-dominated financing towards multicurrency options to fund their diverse overseas ventures. Raymond Mak Ka-chun, co-founder and CEO of Farmacy Group, a Hong Kong-based tech company developing mobile farm systems, said he saw increasing demand from the mainland and other parts of Asia for local partnerships and joint ventures. He said the “Hong Kong brand” was recognised internationally and recalled how a Thai supermarket chain chose his firm over established US and German competitors in an early project. “[The CEO told me] that when doing business, it’s not only about technological excellence, it’s also the trust built over years. They had a good experience working with Hong Kong partners …. We showed our strengths in understanding their Thai culture,” he said. Hua Medicine’s executive director and CEO, Li Chen, said his Shanghai-based pharmaceutical company had benefited from Hong Kong’s “1+” drug approval marketing mechanism, which endorsed the firm’s anti-diabetic medication earlier this year. The milestone had accelerated the company’s overseas expansion plans, he said, adding that the growth potential of Hong Kong’s biotech sector would increase as the city came closer to establishing its own equivalent of the US’ Food and Drug Administration. “We will be able to leverage resources in the Greater Bay Area, from [pooling] patients and contracting research organisations to drug discovery development and manufacturing. The ecosystem already exists in the area.” Professor Lo Yuk-lam, president of the Hong Kong Bio-Med Innotech Association, said that the city’s new drug regulator, known as the Centre for Medical Products Regulation (CMPR), would be key to pushing the city’s biotech development. “Without the CMPR, I don’t think Hong Kong has too much future for bioeconomy,” said Lo, who is hailed as the “father of Hong Kong biotechnology”. “If Hong Kong wants to have some new economy, bioeconomy is one of the major areas,” he stressed. Gordon Zhou, chief healthcare solutions and strategy architect at Huawei’s Healthcare Business Unit, said there should be clear mutual recognition of health data systems between Hong Kong and the mainland to help build a successful drug regulator.

Hong Kong should build AI plan around ‘competitive’ strengths, industry leaders say

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Panel speakers at China Conference say city’s AI blueprint should not be too broad and harness urban development, healthcare and finance capabilities

Panel speakers at China Conference say city’s AI blueprint should not be too broad and harness urban development, healthcare and finance capabilities