STATE FIRMS URGED TO BE MORE ACTIVE IN HK
SOEs, such as Sinopec and China Merchant, plan to increase investment, say sources
CHINA has called on its biggest state firms to take a more active role in Hong Kong, including stepping up investment and asserting more control of companies in the financial hub, said executives familiar with the matter, as Beijing attempts to calm months of unrest in the citystate.
At a meeting this week in Shenzhen, the city bordering Hong Kong, senior representatives from nearly 100 of China’s largest state-run companies were urged to do their part to help cool China’s biggest political crisis in years, said three executives.
At the meeting, the stateowned enterprises (SOEs) pledged to invest more in key Hong Kong industries, including real estate and tourism, in a bid to create jobs for local citizens and stabilise financial markets, said two of the executives.
The SOEs in attendance included oil giant Sinopec and conglomerate China Merchants Group, said a source.
The meeting was organised by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (Sasac), the powerful
central body that oversees China’s sprawling state sector.
Instead of simply holding stakes in Hong Kong companies, the Chinese SOEs were also urged to look to control companies and have decision-making power in them, said one of the people.
“The business elites in Hong Kong are certainly not doing enough. Most of them are just not one of us,” said an SOE executive who was at the meeting.
Sasac’s Communist Party chief, Hao Peng, appeared in Hong Kong on Wednesday at a forum for the Belt and Road infrastructure initiative and said that SOEs were looking for ways to cooperate in major projects in the city, said a Sasac news release.
Hao, who was accompanied by a group of SOE executives, also met with Carrie Lam, the city’s chief executive officer.
Meanwhile, almost a quarter of businesses in a new survey are thinking of leaving Hong Kong to escape ongoing protests, with most looking to Singapore as their favoured location.
Some 23 per cent of surveyed companies with an office in Hong Kong are considering moving business functions from the city, while one per cent already have plans to relocate, according to the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore poll.
Of those firms, nine in 10 see Singapore as the best option — beating any other destination in Southeast Asia or elsewhere.