As the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region consolidates its business links with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Middle East, the city’s professional services sector has a pivotal role to play in accelerating these bonds, says Hong Kong business titan Jonathan Choi Koon-shum.

Professional services will be in great demand from Middle Eastern countries as their real-estate development booms, contends Choi, chairman of the Hong Kong Chinese General Chamber of Commerce. He also heads the Hong Kong-based conglomerate Sunwah Group, whose operations span the seafood-and-foodstuff, real-estate, financial services, technology, media, infrastructure, education and training, as well as green technology and healthcare industries.

The special administrative region has developed a suite of property and construction-related professional services, such as town planning, architecture, engineering, consultation, and smart-city technologies, aided by a robust and thriving property market, and financial connectivity will be a major business interaction between Hong Kong and the Middle East.

With the advent of the digital and green economy, ASEAN member states need smart-city technologies, artificial intelligence and data science expertise, as well as the Chinese mainland’s new energy technologies, to propel green and digital economic transformation.

Opportunities nearby

“Hong Kong’s professional services can fuel the bonds between ASEAN and Hong Kong not only in such services, but also in trade and traditional segments ranging from finance, real-estate construction and mercantile goods trade to emerging sectors like new energy,” says Choi, who is also a Standing Committee member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference — the nation’s top political advisory body.

For ASEAN, Hong Kong’s economic role is more important than ever. “Hong Kong is the connector, investor and operator, investing in and managing projects in the regional bloc.”

The theme of Hong Kong enterprises’ capital investment in ASEAN countries is even more far-reaching. The grouping is seeing an array of traditional manufacturing businesses emerging, such as garments and electronics factories, fueled by a regionalization trend in the production process, as more mainland companies relocate their manufacturing bases to Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam amid Sino-US trade frictions in the past few years.