As the old Chinese saying goes, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” It is an apposite thought as Hong Kong hosts the 11th Belt and Road Summit, themed “Advancing High-quality Development, Embarking on a New Journey”.
The summit has, since its inception, tracked the evolution of the Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious infrastructure initiative that involves more than 150 countries and over 30 international organizations, and forms an increasingly diversified framework touching trade, green development, digital connectivity, and professional services.
Hong Kong’s role within that framework has evolved. Earlier this year, at the Belt and Road Joint Conference, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Algernon Yau Ying-wah reported on the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government’s progress in forging new trade and investment agreements, establishing a new Economic and Trade Office in Riyadh, and accelerating the work of the Task Force on Supporting Mainland Enterprises in Going Global. None of these happened by accident; they reflect sustained, patient effort to widen Hong Kong’s usefulness as a platform connecting the Chinese mainland with the broader world.
This year’s summit brings that effort into sharper focus. What stands out most are the new thematic sessions introduced this year: a Go Global chapter about helping mainland enterprises expand overseas through Hong Kong’s professional services strengths, alongside a dedicated chapter on Central Asia and the Middle East that builds on the momentum of the chief executive-led delegations of the past two years. A new GoGlobal Connect Zone, roundtable discussions and a study mission to Nansha in Guangzhou will complement more than 300 investment projects worth a combined $3.7 billion and over 800 one-on-one project-matching meetings.
This expansion tells us something important about where Hong Kong sees its comparative advantage heading. It is no longer positioning itself only as a financing and trading conduit for mega-infrastructure, but as a comprehensive services platform: legal, financial, logistical, and technological, for enterprises on both sides of the “going-global” equation.
The summit’s program reflects this shift, with a new GreenTech Zone showcasing artificial intelligence, green technologies, and smart-city solutions, and a University Zone bringing together local institutions to display research output and talent. These additions sit naturally alongside the ’summit’s more traditional Hong Kong Zone and Global Investment Zone, and they echo the broader push, evident throughout Hong Kong’s ongoing effort to draft its first five-year development blueprint aligned with the national 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30), to root the city’s international connectivity in genuine innovation capacity rather than in trade facilitation alone.
That capacity is not aspirational; it is measurable. The Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou cluster topped the World Intellectual Property Organization’s global innovation cluster ranking in 2025. Projects such as the Northern Metropolis, intended to eventually house about 2.5 million residents and provide some 650,000 jobs close to Shenzhen’s innovation core, reinforce the idea that Hong Kong’s Belt and Road ambitions and its technology ambitions are not two separate stories, but a single one.
A city that wants to remain the preferred gateway for mainland enterprises going global, and the preferred entry point for international capital coming in, needs the innovation ecosystem to match the trade infrastructure. This summit, in bringing green technology, smart-city solutions and university research into the same halls as trade delegations and project pitches, seems to understand that.
None of this would carry much weight without the institutional architecture that makes Hong Kong distinct. Under the “one country, two systems” principle, the city combines deep integration with the mainland with a common-law legal framework, free capital flows, and internationally trusted professional services, a combination that few other cities can offer. That is what allows Hong Kong to genuinely function as a superconnector. In this context, Hong Kong does not operate alone. The Macao SAR’s “1+4”’ economic diversification strategy depends on complementary strengths across the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, with Hong Kong contributing banking and financial services expertise, Shenzhen its technological prowess, and Guangzhou its manufacturing and research capabilities. The Belt and Road Summit’s growing regional chapters, and its new ASEAN Market Day, extend that same logic outward: Rather than each market or each city competing in isolation, the model is one of layered, complementary cooperation, from the Greater Bay Area outward to ASEAN countries and regions, Central Asia and the Middle East.
Talent remains the other decisive variable. Hong Kong’s ranking in the IMD World Talent Ranking climbed to fourth globally last year, its highest ever, and the city continues to see all eight of its publicly funded universities ranked among Asia’s top 100 in the Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings 2026.
A summit that pairs project investment sessions with a dialogue with youth business leaders, and a University Zone alongside its trade and finance chapters, is implicitly betting that talent and connectivity reinforce one another. Financial instruments matter too: Hong Kong’s growing role in renminbi internationalization and its continued development of green and digital finance tools give substance to the trade relationships the summit is designed to catalyze, ensuring that agreements signed in Wan Chai translate into capital that actually moves.
The 11th Belt and Road Summit arrives at a moment when Hong Kong’s various strategic threads — its first five-year plan, its Northern Metropolis ambitions, further Greater Bay Area integration, and its longstanding BRI role — are converging. The summit demonstrates that connectivity, innovation, and talent now reinforce one another in ways that make Hong Kong’s superconnector role more durable in an increasingly fragmented global economy.
The author is a fintech adviser, a researcher and a former business analyst for a Hong Kong publicly listed company.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
