U.S. firms keen to tap China’s boom region

Business executives in California are taking advantage of the opportunities provided by the Guangdong-Hong KongMacao Greater Bay Area to expand their companies.

“I still think there’s a huge interconnectedness between the U.S. and China, and opportunities,” said Gordon Hinkle, vice-president of California Center, a business platform that connects companies to Chinese partners.

The Greater Bay Area encompasses nine cities in Guangdong province and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao in southern China. The region is home to the largest concentration of China’s Fortune 500 companies and houses many of China’s technology big names. It is one of the most dynamic regions in China, contributing to about 12% of total national economic output.

The Greater Bay Area, of which Hong Kong is a part, is emerging as a global economic powerhouse with the potential “to become much greater than the sum of its parts”, said Tiffany Wong, director of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council Los Angeles.

“At the HKTDC we have seen a huge interest in the Greater Bay Area from international businesses. Undoubtedly this will be another area of focus for international business opportunity in the post-pandemic world.”

The pandemic has given rise to opportunities for U.S. businesses across many sectors, including healthcare, sustainability-related innovations and services, said the HKTDC, a statutory body created in 1966 to explore potential markets for Hong Kong companies, especially small and medium-sized companies.

In addition, China’s commitment to reach carbon neutrality by 2060 creates a “vast demand” for sustainability expertise in the country’s transition to a greener economy, the council said.

Noting that California has a strong clean energy and healthcare technology market, the HKTDC said businesses can enhance their partnership with China via the Greater Bay Area.

“Green development will create opportunities not only in clean energy, green construction materials, electrical vehicles, but also green finance — a sector that Hong Kong is actively developing.”

Hinkle said California Center’s sister company, McWong International, with offices in the U.S. and China that design and manufacture lightingcontrol equipment, has won numerous awards for creating breakthrough technologies saving energy.

Hinkle plans to grasp the opportunities created by the Greater Bay Area development.

He already works closely with business partners in several regions and provinces of China.

“Especially now with the new bridge that goes from Hong Kong to Macao, it is just an easier connectivity,” he said. He hopes to see more interaction between U.S. companies and those in Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland.

In a recent webinar organized by the Commonwealth Club of California, Sean Randolph, senior director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, said the Pearl River Delta region was the first area in China that opened up trade with the West. It has since become the foremost ground in China for pursuing economic reform, he said.

The San Francisco Bay Area has enjoyed historical ties with the Greater Bay Area, he said. Most of the Chinese immigration into the region came from Guangdong province.

Many fields that are the No.1 concern for the Bay Area are also given priority in the Greater Bay Area, which creates opportunities for collaboration, he said. Randolph named climate change, clean energy, healthcare, electric and autonomous vehicles, biomedicine and pharmaceuticals, as well as financial technology, as just some of the promising areas.

“Hong Kong continues to present a unique platform for engaging with the Greater Bay Area,” Randolph said.

“There will be a long-term legacy of China’s investment in science, its investment in infrastructure in the region, which I think will continue to enable the region to continue to grow, and across those jurisdictions present potentially strong opportunities for collaboration with us here in the San Francisco Bay Area.”

This could also apply to other parts of California and across the U.S., Randolph said.