Mr. Duncan Chiu, chairman of the local Cyberport Investors Network Steering Group has said that when it comes to tech entrepreneurship, the talent in Hong Kong has been reserved compared to their mainland contemporaries. Since the beginning they have been pursuing careers in banking and other career paths.

However, during the last decade, things have started to change. The local government has played its part, along with current and former chief executives to transform the city of Hong Kong into an innovation hub. In 2005, the Cyberport initiative was launched by the government, for the incubation of tech startups.

Around the same time, tech startups started receiving funding from the US, Mainland China and Japan. Chiu is hopeful that Cyberport is on the verge of becoming a fintech cluster. The tech companies of this incubator have already received a funding of HKD$ 3.89 billion in the first half of this fiscal year.

Chiu responded philosophically to the growing trade tensions between China and US. He says that the local tech investment effects are not going to be short terms. Instead the companies as well as their investors will experience a paradigm shift.

Chiu is hopeful that the government will provide the local investors with incentives, so they will continue to fund the local tech ecosystem in Hong Kong.

While speaking to Technode, Tang Chibo, managing partner at China focused Gobi Ventures, says that he is fairly optimistic about the tech future in Hong Kong.

Furthermore, Tang foresees a great amount of growth in the next ten years, he just moved to Hong Kong, having spent a decade in Shanghai. According to him the Special Administrative Region is a key city for innovation in China; not only in financial technologies, but AI and logistics as well.

Having education from abroad, Tang says that the local talent is fairly global, as far as origin and experience is concerned.

With more entrepreneurs entering the global landscape, partnership with China will become more common. China is working with great enthusiasm towards the integration of the Bay Area region, Hong Kong, Macau, as well as the cities in Guangdong province, to form a grand economic powerhouse.

As far as the future is concerned, Chiu is extremely confident that the time isn’t far when the Bay Area region will become the Silicon Valley of China.