The Greater Bay Area Symposium

The Greater Bay Area is a frequently discussed topic, where a Blueprint plan was put forward by the Chinese central government in February 2019. The British Chamber of Commerce Guangdong and its associated members have a rich history and vested interest in the GBA, in terms of growth, investment, other innovation opportunities with Great Britain.

Therefore, an objective of this symposium is to raise awareness to our members and business community and share insights of what the plan will mean for our businesses, education, investment, property, transport and growth opportunities.

We were honoured to have William Sung, founder and CEO of Wilosophy, as the host and moderator to introduce the background, scopes and challenges of GBA.

In this seminar, six prominent speakers were invited to deliver their own unique observations and opinions regarding GBA with respect to their respective industries, providing the audience with fruitful knowledge and insightful trends.

Li Feng, deputy director general of Invest Guangzhou, brought with us the Guangzhou-Innovation Engine of GBA in three perspectives, including the scientific and technological innovation of Guangzhou, the vitality renewal of this city and the construction of the transportation hub.

Ivan Li, management partner of KPMG Shenzhen and head of financial services, KPMG Southern China, helped us to walk through the history and overview of banking and Fintech, and shared with us his expectation of this two promising fields based on the previous exploration and overview.

Sam Chow, director of Ove Arup & Partners Hongkong Ltd., talked about accelerating the transport connectivity in the GBA. His speech had a key focus on the GBA’s Plan for the infrastructure improvements in 2018, along with the future transport infrastructure developments across the region. 

Xiangman Shen, senior partner of Stephenson Harwood- Weitu (China), provided us with the legal complications in trading in GBA and some practical solutions. His speech elaborated the plans six dimensions, which involved trading under the different legal regimes in GBA, choice of laws and application of laws, dispute resolution, enforcement, and growing trend – unification of legal regimes in GBA will be a key hurdle to overcome if the GBA is to succeed.

Julia Li, principal of Nord Anglia School Foshan, discussed how bilingual education benefits students and brings talents to GBA. During her speech, she shared her views on Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area synergy in education, talent being the first resource and how do we contribute in developing GBA education and talent hub.

Carlby Xie, head of research, South China, Savills, talked about capitalising on opportunities by going with the tide of the times. Four perspectives were explored at the seminar, which included economic, demographic, and infrastructure development contexts, the GBA property market overview and trends around the investment activities in core cities. He also touched the outlook and recommendations on retail and commercial real estate.

The speeches were followed by a panel discussion. Both our moderator and audience asked lots of probing questions towards the speakers from perspectives from where the investment would come from and which were the major hurdles to overcome. Questions from the audience drew deep discussion lasted for nearly an hour around domestic and internalization.

The afternoon was a huge success and it was great to see so many of our audience taking inspiration from the panel of speakers, and the conversations and view sharing continued long after the event closed!