Initiative helps Hong Kong students get mainland business experience

For years, it has been the exception rather than the norm for local university graduates with a degree in China business studies to carve out a business career on the mainland. Opportunities for them to head north have always seemed less than abundant. But things may be starting to change, thanks to a Hong Kong businessman who is keen to equip local young people with the skills to build a career up north.

Andy Lee, founder of the Hong Kong Brand for China Market Association, has undertaken various initiatives in recent years to help Hong Kong students majoring in China business studies to embark on careers on the mainland. These initiatives include a summer internship programme for Baptist and City universities' students to work in different provinces, and hosting workshops that bring together local students and Hong Kong small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with operations on the mainland.

In a few weeks, his efforts are set to culminate in the opening of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Zone in Shanghai, where a small cluster of Hong Kong SMEs and young entrepreneurs will launch their own retail businesses on a site provided by Fudan University, with students from Hong Kong volunteering to help these companies grow their brands.

"This is going to be an exciting project that will allow Hong Kong students to gain practical experience in China by helping the Hong Kong SMEs with brand development and research, whereas the SMEs can tap the mainland market and open their own shops, with help from the students and without having to pay exorbitant rent," Lee says.

Part of Lee's motivation to nurture the students and connect them with mainland-based Hong Kong SMEs stems from what he sees as a lack of practical working knowledge on both sides.

"In Hong Kong, more than 90 per cent of students doing China business studies at university end up working in finance, banking or similar fields, but rarely in the business world on the mainland," says Lee, who is one of the first wave of Hong Kong entrepreneurs to make use of Cepa (the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement) to establish a retail business on the mainland.

"By and large, this has to do with the students' lack of practical experience. To forge a career on the mainland, real-life experience is all-important, but what these students have is often just classroom knowledge acquired miles away in Hong Kong," he says.