Cooperation: Leveraging on each side's strengths

The Beijing municipal government on Tuesday held a series of roundtables to promote cooperation in the service trade, technology investment, tourism, food security, and health services.

Hong Kong, which is equipped with world-class technology infrastructure, will also collaborate with Beijing to develop the region into a center of thriving innovation activities, leveraging on each side's strengths, said Susanne Wong, assistant commissioner for innovation and technology from Hong Kong.

The city's international connectivity, its research and development capability and legal framework and intellectual property rights protection work perfectly with mainland cities, which is rich in land supply, with well-established manufacturing bases, facilities and developed clusters.

The Hong Kong Science Park, three industrial estates and five research and development centers on the one hand enables the city to be able to "transfer technology into commercialization".

On the other hand, as the Hong Kong government has been generously providing innovation and technology funds to assist relevant departments to attract good cooperation opportunities, it also provides ample potential for mainland talents and companies to seek business opportunities in Hong Kong, according to Wong.

At the same time, as the center of private equity investments in Asia, Hong Kong has attracted over 30 percent venture capital firms in the region, according to Vincent Chan, president of Hong Kong Venture Capital and Private Equity Association.

As the base of the venture capital fund, Hong Kong is equipped with top investment bankers, lawyers, accountants and appraisers, and most importantly, a good vision of the mainland capital market, which also enabled capital in the city to participate in the development of science and technology projects on the mainland, Chan said during the symposium on Tuesday.