Hong Kong is well-positioned to facilitate small and medium-sized enterprises’ digital and intelligent transformation with its financial and technological prowess and contribute to the nation’s sci-tech self-reliance and industrial upgrading drive, officials and experts said.

They made their remarks at a forum in Shenzhen on Friday, which was co-organized by Hong Kong Small and Medium Listed Companies Association and Shenzhen Financial Chamber of Commerce. The forum focused on Hong Kong’s new role and new opportunities arising from Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area integration under the nation’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30).

In its 15th Five-Year Plan, China attaches great importance to the capital market’s role in serving the real economy as well as to scientific and technological innovation, said Tan Yueheng, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee.

As an international capital market hub, Hong Kong will continue to optimize its institutional arrangements for listing, financing, mergers and acquisitions and market value management, he said.

“This will provide high-efficiency capital channels for tech-driven and growth-oriented SMEs, enabling them to accelerate artificial intelligence transformation and scale expansion through capital empowerment,” he said.

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While the national five-year blueprint reaffirms Hong Kong’s role to consolidate and enhance its status as an international financial hub, it also tasks the city with building itself into a global innovation and technology center.

The Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou innovation cluster has, for the first time, ranked top among the world’s 100 leading innovation clusters in the 2025 Global Innovation Index, released by the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Such achievements cannot be achieved without government efforts. Sun Dong, secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, said in a video address that Hong Kong is sparing no effort to develop into an international innovation and technology center.

Backed by policies including the HK$10 billion ($1.27 billion) New Industrialisation Acceleration Scheme and the HK$10 billion Innovation and Technology Industry-Oriented Fund, the government has supported 620 I&T enterprises so far.

“We continue to provide policy support for SMEs in financing, listing and AI transformation, fully leveraging Hong Kong’s unique advantage of being ‘backed by the motherland and connected to the world’,” he said.

Mao Zhenhua, professor of the University of Hong Kong Business School, said the 15th Five-Year Plan period represents a critical stage for developing new quality productive forces and advancing industrial structural upgrading.

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As AI is profoundly reshaping industrial rules and competitive landscapes, digital and intelligent transformation is “no longer an option, but a must” for the survival and development of SMEs, he said.

The scholar urged enterprises to seize the opportunities brought by the integration of the Greater Bay Area, and to proactively align with the 15th Five-Year Plan to achieve leapfrog development through technological, business model and management innovation.

Contact the writer at sally@chinadailyhk.com