Integration of technology and finance is gathering speed in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), as the 11-city cluster strives to leverage its synergies to build itself into a high-tech powerhouse.
China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) outlined the need to enhance the quality and efficiency of financial services in serving the real economy. Sci-tech finance, along with green finance, inclusive finance, elderly-care finance and digital finance, have been listed as the five key pillars in promoting high-quality financial development.
The 2026 Government Work Report, delivered by Premier Li Qiang earlier this month at the opening of the fourth session of the 14th National People's Congress, China’s top legislature, also highlighted the importance of strengthening full-chain and whole-life-cycle financial services for scientific and technological innovation.
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“Promoting the development of sci-tech finance and empowering the innovative growth of tech enterprises has been a key focus point of our business over the past year,” said Fang Weihao, vice-president of Ping An Bank.
The Shenzhen-based lender reported that the number of its clients in the tech sector reached 31,900 as of the end of 2025, up 21.1 percent from a year earlier. Its outstanding loans to tech firms amounted to 306.58 billion yuan ($44.36 billion), an increase of 9.8 percent year-on-year.
Fang said the bank will continue to increase financing for high-end manufacturing sectors, including new energy, advanced manufacturing and commercial aerospace, and provide them with comprehensive financial services.
It will also step up support for future industries such as artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, embodied intelligence and quantum computing, he added.
Sci-tech finance plays a vital role in the country’s push for technological self-reliance amid US tech curb and intensifying global competition. The Greater Bay Area, with the combined strengths of technological innovation and financial sophistication, has been tasked with developing into an international technology and innovation hub.
The Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou innovation cluster in the southern region has, for the first time, claimed the top spot in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s 2025 Global Innovation Index, overtaking Japan’s Tokyo-Yokohama cluster.
The number of high-tech enterprises in Guangdong province increased from roughly 53,000 to 74,000 over the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period. Ninety percent of the province’s expenditure on research and development comes from enterprises.
To push for deeper integration of technology and finance, the provincial government introduced 15 measures in 2024, covering venture capital, pledge financing, banks’ tech credit, and others.
According to the policies, banks are encouraged to expand the scale of sci-tech credit, making use of such methods as loan renewal without principal repayment, more flexible interest rate pricing and interest repayment to meet the financing needs of various types of tech firms.
Wu Haifeng, director of Sustainable Finance Research Center and Shenzhen Institute of Data Economy at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, described the integration of technology and finance as the “circulatory system” and “accelerator” for the Greater Bay Area to break through core key technologies and foster new quality productive forces.
“It helps establish a diversified financing system that supports different stages of tech firms throughout their life cycle, enabling hard-tech enterprises to bridge the ‘valley of death’,” he said.
“Innovation resources can be more efficiently allocated, as capital will flow to tech sectors with the most promising prospect with the help of big data and artificial intelligence technologies.”
Wu also stressed the importance of taking full advantage of the region’s edges in cross-boundary financial cooperation between Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
“Hong Kong boasts an internationalized financial system and a mature capital market, while Shenzhen and other Chinese mainland cities offer vast tech application scenarios and a strong industrial base. Their collaboration can effectively connect international capital with mainland innovation projects, facilitate the cross-boundary use of research funds, and attract global patient capital to support original innovation in the Greater Bay Area,” he said.
However, mismatch between the tech sector and traditional financial system still exists and, as a result, the supporting role of the financial system cannot be fully unleashed, pointed out Yang Tao, deputy director of the National Institution for Finance and Development.
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Financial institutions face difficulties in accurately evaluating tech firms’ technological advantages, innovation value and market prospects, while fragmented funding needs at different corporate stages fail to match standardized financial services, he elaborated.
Yang proposed the creation of a multi-tiered financial service model featuring an integrated “loan, equity, insurance, bond and leasing” mechanism, with differentiated support for startups, growth-stage and mature tech firms. Moreover, risk management services should be further optimized to ensure clear accountability, risk sharing and commercially sustainable development for sci-tech finance.
Wu called on the Greater Bay Area to fully leverage its “cross-boundary” feature to strive to make new breakthroughs in data flow, patient capital supply, financial talent cultivation, specialized finance development and regulation.
Contact the writer at sally@chinadailyhk.com
