When finance ministers and other senior officials from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum’s 21 member economies gather in Hong Kong on Tuesday and Wednesday, they will do more than compare notes on growth and risk. They will sit in a city that China, as APEC chair this year, has deliberately placed at the center of the region’s financial conversation. The venue is not a convenience; it is an emphatic statement.
China is hosting APEC for the third time, 12 years after its last turn in the chair. The theme of the China Year — “Building an Asia-Pacific Community to Prosper Together” — is organized around openness, innovation and cooperation. Within that architecture, the Finance Ministerial Meeting is one of the most consequential specialized gatherings under the APEC umbrella: a platform in which economies coordinate macroeconomic policy, deepen financial cooperation, and prepare substantive outcomes ahead of the Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Shenzhen in November. That Hong Kong has been chosen to host this meeting for the first time is a clear statement of confidence. It affirms the city’s standing as the nation’s preeminent international financial center and signals that Beijing wants the world to see Hong Kong doing what it does best.
The year’s geography of ministerial meetings makes the point with quiet precision. In June, Macao hosted the APEC Tourism Ministerial Meeting, drawing hundreds of delegates to discuss smart tourism and travel facilitation. Tourism for Macao, finance for Hong Kong: Each special administrative region has been given a stage matched to its comparative strengths. Both gatherings function as curtain-raisers for the 33rd APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting across the boundary in Shenzhen. The arrangement is neither accidental nor merely ceremonial. It reflects a national strategy that treats the two SARs as distinctive assets within a wider southern China corridor of high-standard opening-up — and that trusts Hong Kong to convene the region’s finance chiefs when the stakes are highest.
The agenda itself rewards close attention. China’s Ministry of Finance has set four priorities for the finance track: fiscal policy that supports households and livelihoods; financing for digital infrastructure; inclusive finance adapted to local conditions; and exchanges among young financial talent across APEC economies. These are not abstract talking points. They address immediate pressures — sustaining growth, managing risk, protecting people’s well-being — while looking ahead to the financing needs of digitalization and artificial intelligence, and to the next generation of policymakers who must navigate both.
Hong Kong is unusually well placed to host such a conversation. The Global Financial Centres Index has again ranked the city third worldwide, behind only New York and London, and first in Asia. Hong Kong’s first Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development places fresh emphasis on reinforcing that status, deepening the offshore renminbi hub, and tightening capital-market connectivity. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po has noted that the four APEC priorities are fields in which Hong Kong can make an active contribution — precisely because they sit at the intersection of public finance, market depth, technology and human capital. Roughly 87 percent of Hong Kong’s external trade is with APEC economies; those economies together account for well over half of global output. When finance chiefs meet here, they meet in a market that already lives the region’s interdependence.
The meeting’s opening will underscore the same message. Finance Minister Lan Fo’an will lead the Chinese delegation, chair the gathering and deliver a keynote address. Officials from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank are expected to make presentations on the economic outlook and policy options. Alongside formal sessions, finance chiefs will hold a closed-door discussion on promoting Asia-Pacific growth in a world in flux, and a working luncheon with the APEC Business Advisory Council on mobilizing private capital for digital infrastructure. These formats matter. They bring finance, multilateral institutions and business into the same room — the sort of triangulation Hong Kong has long specialized in facilitating.
Critics sometimes treat international meetings as mere spectacle. That would be a misreading. In a period of heightened uncertainty — tangled geopolitics, strained supply chains, uneven fiscal space — the Asia-Pacific’s capacity for calm, structured dialogue is itself a public good. APEC’s founding purpose was never to manufacture unanimity; it was to keep economies talking, trading and investing on the basis of openness and mutual benefit. Hosting the APEC Finance Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong strengthens that habit. It also allows visiting officials to see, at close range, a jurisdiction that combines common law commercial certainty, deep capital markets, a concentration of professional talent, and a proven role as a bridge between the Chinese mainland and the rest of the world.
What Hong Kong owes the occasion is seriousness of purpose. Showcase the city’s achievements as a global financial center, yes — but also demonstrate how those achievements serve the nation, the region and the wider system of economic cooperation. That means using the meeting to advance practical cooperation on household-supporting fiscal tools, bankable models for digital infrastructure, inclusive access that respects local conditions, and talent pipelines that outlast any single meeting.
The choice of Hong Kong was deliberate. The responsibility that follows is equally so. If the city rises to it, the APEC Finance Ministerial Meeting will be remembered not only as a landmark hosting, but as proof that the city remains indispensable to open regional finance — and that China’s confidence in that role is well placed.
The author is the convenor at China Retold, a member of the Legislative Council, and a member of the Central Committee of the New People’s Party.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
