Nicholas Lyons, the lord mayor of the City of London, visited the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) over the weekend for the first time in four years, according to media reports.
Observers said that the visit, which came after Lyons’ trip to the Chinese mainland last week, would serve as testimony to the attractiveness of Hong Kong as a global financial hub, after the SAR fully resumed cross-border travel with the Chinese mainland and shrugged off COVID concerns.
The visit also laid bare a drastic divergence between the UK business community and the UK government, with the former desiring to strengthen economic ties with the world’s second-largest economy and share the dividends of its continuous opening-up, while the latter panders to the US with claims of a “threat” from China.
The British Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong hosted a lunch for Lyons over the weekend at which he met about 40 guests, mostly members of the business group, to discuss increased mutual investment and cooperation on green financing, the South China Morning Post reported.
Industry insiders said Lyons, who is a global ambassador for the UK’s financial services sector, usually tours around the world for business promotion every year, including Hong Kong.
So the first visit in four years carries great significance as it shed light on UK businesses’ high expectations for deeper communication with Hong Kong, whose role in the global finance sector was not dampened by pandemic disruption and which retains its position as a “super connector” between the Chinese mainland and the world, Liu Guohong, director of the Department of Finance and Modern Industries at the China Development Institute in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, told the Global Times on Monday.
“Hong Kong is also the largest offshore yuan trading center. So it is also natural that the City of London would look to expand cooperation with the HKSAR amid the central government’s stepped-up financial opening-up,” Liu said.
Paul McComb, the new executive director of the chamber, was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post that thanks to the closer ties between the UK and the HKSAR, the city was one of the country’s top 10 export markets last year. He indicated that the city’s trade has not dived after the implementation of the National Security Law, which observers said provides evidence debunking certain media outlets’ hype.
On Thursday, Chinese Vice President Han Zheng met with Lyons in Beijing. Noting that the economic and trade ties between China and the UK enjoy sound momentum and huge potential, Han said financial cooperation has increasingly become a new driving force for bilateral practical cooperation, according to Xinhua.
For his part, Lyons said that the UK and China share broad common interests and have good prospects for financial cooperation, adding that the City of London is willing to deepen cooperation with the Chinese government, enterprises, and financial institutions to achieve win-win development.
(Global Times)
