Edward Tse

Opinion | Greater Bay Area offers a much larger playing field for Hong Kong’s young talent

China has become the world’s largest business laboratory and Hongkongers are global citizens. The Greater Bay Area is a natural place for our young people to venture into, to take advantage of the opportunities brought about by China’s innovation and entrepreneurship

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Edward Tse

Published: 5:15am, 21 Dec 2020Updated: 5:40am, 21 Dec 2020

In October, during the 40th anniversary of the Shenzhen special economic zone, President Xi Jinping encouraged young people in Hong Kong and Macau to study and work on the mainland to strengthen their “sense of belonging”.

Recently, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor unveiled the Greater Bay Area Youth Employment Scheme which, by partially funding 2,000 positions, encourages companies in the region to create jobs for Hong Kong’s young people.

China has transformed incredibly since it started reforming and opening up more than four decades ago. But many Hongkongers continue to hold biased and outdated views of the mainland.

In the early 1990s, right after Deng Xiaoping’s landmark visit to Shenzhen to emphasise China’s commitment to reform, I started working in China, helping to run the new Shanghai office for Boston Consulting Group. Multinational companies came in droves to investigate if and how they should enter the Chinese market, and many hired us for help.

While the multinationals paid our bills, the local Chinese companies were more intriguing to me. Though the notion of strategy was new for them, they were curious to see how Western firms managed their businesses and were eager to learn.

I have commuted regularly between the mainland and Hong Kong for close to 30 years, seeing how the two places have developed and crossed paths. As someone born and raised in Hong Kong but with an American education and work experience, my background gives me a unique vantage point.