By Dr. Kevin Lau
As early as 2013, President Xi Jinping proposed the joint construction of the "Silk Road Economic Belt" with countries in Europe and Asia during his state visits, aiming to strengthen economic ties, deepen cooperation, expand development space, and enhance cooperation in five areas: policy coordination, infrastructure connectivity, trade facilitation, financial integration, and people-to-people bonds. Subsequently, President Xi proposed further strengthening maritime cooperation with ASEAN countries during another state visit, jointly constructing the "21st Century Maritime Silk Road" The parallel development of these two initiatives led to the Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to achieve shared consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefits, becoming an important strategy for China's foreign development over the past decade.
In recent days, the HKSAR government and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council held a two-day Belt and Road Summit, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative. The forum was attended by thousands of political and business leaders, entrepreneurs, and non-governmental organization heads from both domestic and international sectors. In addition to summarizing the achievements of the Belt and Road Initiative over the past decade, the forum was held in Hong Kong with the purpose of discussing how the initiative can stimulate high-quality development in the future and how Hong Kong can maintain its unique advantages and play a more important role in jointly building the Belt and Road.
From a Hong Kong perspective, I believe we can understand the Belt and Road Initiative from both macro and micro perspectives. Firstly, the Belt and Road Initiative covers a wide geographic scope, extending from nearby ASEAN countries to South Asia, West Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia, and even as far as Central and Eastern European countries such as Poland and Hungary. China has signed over 200 cooperation documents on jointly building the Belt and Road with more than 180 countries and international organizations. These countries are not highly developed markets, which means they have great development potential. As a result, the average annual trade volume between mainland China and Belt and Road countries has grown rapidly, doubling from one trillion US dollars in the year the initiative was proposed to two trillion US dollars last year, with an average annual growth rate of 8%. From a macro perspective, the Belt and Road countries are an entirely new universe for Hong Kong. For Hong Kong businesses that are rich in capital, talent, and technology but lack cheap land and other production factors, this represents a vast blue ocean. Many projects under the Belt and Road Initiative involve large-scale infrastructure, finance, shipping, and related professional services such as financial consulting, accounting, and law. Actively participating in the Belt and Road Initiative means that professionals in these fields in Hong Kong may see their businesses grow exponentially, with limitless prospects.
What about the micro perspective? The micro perspective focuses on Hong Kong itself. The government and the business sector need to carefully examine Hong Kong's advantages that are applicable to the development and implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative. Then, they should adjust the future development strategy of Hong Kong to allocate more resources to these advantages, ensuring that Hong Kong can achieve better and greater development while contributing to the Belt and Road Initiative.
For example, the demand for investments in RMB has been growing rapidly as more Belt and Road countries use the Chinese currency for cross-border trade settlement. Hong Kong already handles three-quarters of offshore RMB payment transactions and has the largest offshore RMB bond market. Therefore, the government and the business sector should continue to strengthen Hong Kong's global offshore RMB business to better meet the diverse financing needs of Belt and Road construction.
The author is a specialist in radiology, with a master degree of Public Health from the University of Hong Kong, and an adviser of Our Hong Kong Foundation.
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