The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government recently iterated its regional and wider Asia focus by signing a memorandum of understanding with Saudi Arabia and marking the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (ETO) in Singapore with a pledge to deepen cooperation.

To quote Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu, who witnessed the Belt and Road Office’s pact with the Saudi side, “This MoU marks another significant milestone in the collaboration between the two sides under the Belt and Road Initiative, especially as it is the first of its kind signed between the HKSAR and an overseas economy in this area of cooperation.”

This particular agreement aims to spur information exchanges in infrastructure and construction and help Hong Kong professional services enter the Saudi market. At the same time, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia are negotiating an Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement.

Saudi Minister of Investment Khalid Al-Falih’s visit to the mainland in late August reportedly saw discussions focused on industrial and petrochemical value chains in Shanghai. While in Beijing, emphasis was placed on financial partnerships and cooperation with State-owned enterprises. The HKSAR was on the last leg of the Saudi delegation’s visit at a time that Sino-Saudi bilateral trade stands in excess of $100 billion annually, making China the kingdom’s largest trading partner. The coordinated trips to key Chinese mainland cities as well as Hong Kong clearly signal a multipronged approach to harness specific expertise. Also, as the Saudi Press Agency points out, “The visit builds on a series of recent successes in bilateral cooperation, most notably the Saudi-Chinese Investment Forum held in December 2023.” It was also in 2023 that Lee led a high-level delegation to Saudi Arabia — a point he stressed in his statement issued after the MoU with the kingdom was signed on Aug 29, 2025.

This particular agreement aims to spur information exchanges in infrastructure and construction and help Hong Kong professional services enter the Saudi market. At the same time, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia are negotiating an Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement

Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development of Hong Kong Algernon Yau Ying-wah shared with the Legislative Council on Feb 26 that in the past three years, the HKSAR government signed 11 MoUs with governments and related organizations in multiple countries participating in the BRI across the Middle East region with a scope covering finance, investment promotion, legal, anticorruption cooperation and customs cooperation — six of them with Saudi Arabia. As Morgan Stanley points out in a December 2024 report, Saudi Arabia is aiming for $100 billion in annual foreign direct investment by the turn of the decade, with investment flow reaching $25.6 billion the year before.

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) pointed out in August after completing the Article IV Consultation for Saudi Arabia that in 2024, nonoil real GDP grew 4.5 percent, driven by retail, hospitality, and construction. “Overall, real GDP is projected to accelerate to 3.9 percent by 2026, supported by the continued phase-out of OPEC+ production cuts,” the board said.

If we look at Hong Kong’s trade data released in August, total exports in July to Asia as a whole grew 19.3 percent year-on-year, in particular 91.9 percent to Taiwan; Malaysia, 80.7 percent; Singapore, 42.5 percent; Vietnam, 42.1 percent; the Philippines, 16.5 percent; and the mainland, 16.1 percent — four of them Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economies.

This is not a surprise. As Yau pointed out in Singapore on Monday, the Singapore ETO, which also serves Vietnam, Laos and India, was the first set up by Hong Kong in Southeast Asia, followed by similar offices in Indonesia and Thailand and one more planned in Malaysia. ASEAN is currently the world’s fourth-largest economic bloc and also Hong Kong’s second-largest trading partner.

The World Economic Forum’s Chief Economists Outlook, issued in January, expects ASEAN GDP to expand 4.7 percent in 2025. Sixty-one percent of chief economists, with Shusong Ba of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing also on the panel, expect South Asia to register strong or very strong growth in 2025. This is significant, considering that earlier in 2025, the IMF projected that the global economy will expand 3.2 percent in 2025, unchanged from 2024, slowing marginally to 3.1 percent over the next five years in what the economists described as one “of the weakest medium-term outlooks in decades”. Emerging Asia has a clear edge and Hong Kong, evidently, is both elevating and diversifying its regionwide focus with prudence. Trade between Hong Kong and the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (the GCC) reached nearly $20 billion in 2024, an increase of more than 53 percent in the past four years, the chief executive said in May, following his visits to Qatar and Kuwait.

But what is even more significant is that the GCC members are forging closer ties with both South Asian and ASEAN economies. The first ASEAN-GCC Summit, held in October 2023 in Riyadh was a landmark event co-chaired by Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. The second edition took place in Malaysia in May.

A couple of examples of specific engagements:

January saw the signing of an MoU to establish the Saudi-Singapore Strategic Partnership Council to be co-chaired by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

In July 2024, Thailand’s Board of Investment opened its first Middle East office in Saudi Arabia following restoration of diplomatic ties in 2022 after a three-decade hiatus.

The Gulf-Asia pivot is a serious and defined work in progress and Hong Kong has been strategically refining and elevating its policy position since 2023.

It’s a pity then that under the heading of Commercial Presence in Hong Kong, all the Hong Kong Trade Development Council has to say is: “The number of Saudi Arabian companies in Hong Kong is not released owing to the small number of companies here — i.e., there are less than five.”

Surely, that can change.

The author is an award-winning English-language fiction writer and current-affairs commentator.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.