Editorial | Hong Kong’s reinvention ensures its future as a thriving financial hub

From the expansion of services to experimentation in new tools, the city is becoming a one-stop shop in cross-border finance and banking

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A view of Exchange Square in Central on May 18. Photo: Sam Tsang

Published: 6:45am, 14 Oct 2025

It seems like only yesterday that the global financial world collectively declared China “uninvestable” and Hong Kong’s once-cherished financial status went down with it. Those same investors are now coming back in droves. If every crisis presents an opportunity, the city is taking that adage to heart. From the expansion of services such as borrowing and hedging the yuan inside mainland China to experimentation in new financial tools such as blockchain currency tokenisation, Hong Kong is becoming a one-stop shop in cross-border finance and banking.

It’s an enviable position being the premier offshore market for the yuan. Conventional wisdom once declared Hong Kong to be a frontline victim in the nasty trade and tech war between China and the United States. Now, it turns out, the city is indispensable as a launch pad for Beijing’s global strategies as it reorients the nation’s trade and investment towards the rest of the world and away from overreliance on the US. Beijing has the vision and the design, and Hong Kong’s leaders do what they have always done best: execute the plan with competence and diligence.

Bankers are quick to spot the new tide, and as the Post’s series on bankers and capital “connectors” showed, they are among the first to take advantage of the city’s newly emerging but uniquely advantageous position. With capital controls on the mainland, Hong Kong has become the natural proving ground for financial innovation, according to UBS Securities’ chairwoman Janice Hu.

That is a major reason for a surge in cross-border flows. One example is the dual listing of Hong Kong-based mining firm Jiaxin International Resources in the city and Kazakhstan’s stock exchange, the first yuan-denominated deal of its kind. That serves as a bridge between Central Asia and China under the Belt and Road Initiative, something Shanghai or Shenzhen’s exchange would struggle to do. Meanwhile, Hong Kong has started licensing stablecoin issuers and developing platforms to digitalise or tokenise real-world assets.

Investors can now trade many stocks in either Hong Kong dollars or the yuan under what are called dual-currency counters. The various stock, bond, swap and payment “connect” schemes have become the basic channels through which many new services and products can be offered and experimented with.

All the financial fervour has propelled the Hang Seng Index to be among the world’s best performers this year while it beat the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq to the top spot for initial public offerings. International capital follows money and opportunity. With Beijing’s 15th five-year plan, Hong Kong’s stature is expected to be further enhanced. Our latest reinvention will secure the city’s future as a thriving financial hub.

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