Quality Alchemist (品質煉金術師): Greater Bay Area Conference: Inclusive Growth through Innovation and Sustainability

I (Chairman, HKSQ) was honor to be invited by China Daily and Silk Road Economic Development Research Center (SREDRC) to participate the 5th Greater Bay Area Conference (previously known as Belt and Road Conference). It aims to examine how various sectors, including financial services, trading and logistics, and professional services, can work together to reap opportunities in the Greater Bay Area, as well as the evolution of smart healthcare and the opportunities it opens up across the sector and other peripheral industries. Before the conference, I took a photo with Mr. Zhou Li (Editorial board member of the China Daily Group and editor-in-chief of China Daily Asia Pacific) and Mr. Joseph N.K. Chan (Chairman, Silk Road Economic Development Research Center; Principal Director & Founding Partner, Oriental Patron Financial Group) for memory.

The venue is great! There are 29 tables.

In the beginning, a chatbot MC was talking with us.

Firstly, Mr. Zhou LI (Editorial Board Member, China Daily Group; Publisher & Editor-in Chief, China Daily Asia Pacific) gave a welcome remarks and introduced this conference.

Then Mr. Joseph CHAN Nap-kee (Chairman, Silk Road Economic Development Research Center) gave a welcome speech and he said GBA plan is initiative of Belt and Road Policy.

The Honourable Mr. C. Y. LEUNG, GBM, GBS, JP (Vice Chairman, The National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference) was the keynote speaker and he shared his view on Greater Bay Area (GBA).

In the beginning, he reviewed the high speed railway in Hong Kong under One-Country Two-System with high degree of autonomy in principle for co-location inspection. That was Policy Innovation.

Then he introduced Policy Innovation for GBA to achieve synergy effect. The further policy innovation needed to lower barriers of two system before market force to take over. Another cooperation was Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, he said it could consider to increase the quota depended on Zhuhai and Hong Kong traffic. Finally, he expected we have a good opportunity under GBA plan in future of Hong Kong.

政策創新達至一地兩檢、大灣區若要取得成功、需要政治決心 (In English)

Group photo of all guests

Panel Discussion I: “Cross-sector Business Collaboration in the Greater Bay Area”
Prof. CHEN Kwan Yiu Edward, GBS, CBE, JP (Chairman, HKU School of Professional and Continuing Education) chaired this session. He said this session would discuss the cross-section cooperation in GBA including financial services, trading and logistics, and professional services, etc.

Firstly, Mr. Max YU (Chief Economist of China Resources Capital Management Co., Ltd.) introduced background of China Resources Group from trading to industry. There were 41% business in GBA and the ROI in GBA was much higher than other area. He said “Aging” was one of trend we met. Now, China needed to have high quality development and innovation needed cross-sector cooperation. He named it as “Cross- sector Thinking” (跨界思维).

Mr. Pantazis THERIANOS (Chief Executive Officer, Euroterra Capital) would considered the supply chain and property. He compared Hong Kong- Zhuhai with London-Italy and said many opportunities on tourism because of multi-culture, cross-sector interaction.

Dr. Thomas S. T. SO (Chairman of Belt and Road Committee and Greater Bay Area Working Group, The Law Society of Hong Kong) said the state report on GBA identified role and responsibility in each city. Hong Kong had opportunities on professional service because we are international finance center and international legal centre. We had 3500 foreign lawyers in Hong Kong (1/3 of total). We could met the business need of GBA industry through international law platform for legal right protection and capital raising.

Lastly, Prof. SHEN Minghao (Dean, Great Bay Area Institute (Guangdong, Hongkong, Macau)) gave a talk named “New function on cross-sector cooperation in GBA”.

Prof. Shen introduced three stages from China open-up to high quality development and compared roles between Mainland and Hong Kong. The first stage is world factory vs international finance center; the second stage is CEPA Free Trade Zone – system different; and last stage is trade war between US and China, our greatest common divisor is technology innovation.

After that Prof. Shen raised five cross-sector integration as follows.

i) Technology innovation and its application (e.g. Digitalization)

ii) Domestic demand enlargement

iii) Standardization and promotion of new business model

iv) Support One Belt One Road Initiative

v) Suitable living city circle (within 1 hour) in GBA.

Lastly, he concluded the future of GBA would be intelligent industry as business engineer, global industry operation platform and the pioneer of IoT.

Panel Discussion II: “Evolution of Smart Healthcare: Technology & Connected Data”

Prof. Hong FUNG, JP, (Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, CUHK Medical Centre) chaired this session and introduced each guests.

Firstly, Mr. Ricky Yin-To CHIU (Founder & CEO, PHASE Scientific) said he was in diagnostic industry such as detecting different cancer in early stage. He said Hong Kong had the best medical system and top scientists in the world. It had a good opportunity to develop healthcare in GBA.

Prof. Chung-Mau LO (Hospital Chief Executive, The University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital) discussed the GBA plan under one-country two system.

Then he also discussed the one-country two system of Health Care System in terms of Service, Funding, Staff Salary and Advantage. He said opportunity and challenge co-existed in this hybrid system (See table below).

After that he introduced the HKU – Shenzhen Hospital plan to us. They employed the smart hospital concept through digitalization and automation of the process from Booking/registration to Payment, to Medical report and then Rating & comment.

Lastly, Prof. Lo demonstrated smart hospital through the video.

Mr. Gary ZHANG (Chairman, Oriental Patron / iCarbonX Health Care Investment and Business Committee) said many patient got chronic illness that was a process which needed to manage. Therefore, digitalized Healthcare had great opportunity in GBA and the world. In the past, people said China had a huge population of hands (World factory). But now they said China had a huge population of biological samples and data (Smart Health Care).

Last guest was Ms. Nancy Sau Ling TSE, JP (Former Chief Financial Officer and Director (Finance and Information Technology Service), Hong Kong Hospital Authority) and she said high ROI on digitalized Healthcare. Moreover, huge investment of AI in this area in China. AI could predicate the resource demand in hospital. She guessed that Fintech brought virtual bank and Health-tech led virtual hospital.

Lunch Dialogue: Shenzhen as a Pilot Demonstration Area: Opportunities and Challenges for Hong Kong

Prof. Witman HUNG, JP (Principal Liaison Officer for Hong Kong, Shenzhen Qianhai Authority) chaired this dialogue.

Dr. GUO Wanda (Executive Vice President, China Development Institute) was last guest and he shared the topic was “New Opportunities for Shenzhen Pilot Demonstration Zone and Hong Kong-Shenzhen Cooperation (深圳先行示範區與港深合作的新機遇)”. Firstly, he reviewed The People Republic of China 70 years, Shenzhen 40 years and Macau return 20 years. He said Shenzhen had three new missions and they were enhancing the open-up policy (新格局), enriching implementation of One-Country Two-System (新實踐), and seeking a new way for Powerful socialist modernization China (社會主義現代化強國新路徑).

Then he introduced the five new positioning of Shenzhen included High Quality, Sustainability, People Happiness, City Civilization and City Governance Standard.

Finally, Dr. Guo told us Shenzhen never replaced Hong Kong but we worked together and complementary each other. He pointed out two new opportunities for cooperation between Hong Kong and Shenzhen below.

i) Cooperation and Competition (Coopetition);

ii) Co-establish the National Science Centre.