As Chinese mainland companies step up their overseas expansion and global investors double down on China, enterprises from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region specializing in professional services and healthcare have secured strong and promising interest from domestic and international clients at the 8th China International Import Expo in Shanghai.

They told China Daily they’re confident the results will surpass last year’s, with follow‑up discussions underway and expectations of turning initial conversations into tangible cooperation opportunities.

The six-day exposition, which ends on Monday, has drawn a record high of some 380 participants from the SAR. The Hong Kong Trade Development Council led 54 of them and organized the Hong Kong Food Pavilion and Hong Kong Service Pavilion. The latter featured 21 firms showcasing the city’s competitive edge in finance and professional services, logistics and medical technology.

Hong Kong-based FreightAmigo, which has attended the event for the fourth year, offers solutions for international logistics, insurance and financing services. It has held talks with over 100 potential clients and clinched 20 preliminary cooperation intentions so far.

Ivy Tse — a co‑founder and joint chief executive officer of FreightAmigo — said the company has signed a memorandum of understanding with partners from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to integrate its platform with their supply chains. “We’re on track to exceed last year’s results with more deals in the pipeline.”

She said the annual expo “isn’t just about (sealing) orders, but a top‑tier ecosystem for networking”. Building on its existing technological cooperation with mainland partners, such as data integration with State-owned platforms to boost supply‑chain visibility and collaborating on artificial intelligence for route optimization, FreightAmigo “absolutely plans to build deeper technology partnerships with both mainland and international companies”.

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Compared with previous editions, Tse said this year’s expo shows “even greater international diversity and innovation focus”, with more visitors from emerging markets like Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and with a greater emphasis on “digital transformation and sustainable trade”.

Rooted in Hong Kong’s financial strength, rule of law and global networks, FreightAmigo sees itself as part of the city’s “super connector” DNA. “We operate with a dual focus”, helping overseas traders to enter the mainland market, and Chinese traders go global, Tse said.

To cement ties with mainland partners, CW CPA — a Hong Kong‑based accounting firm with offices across the Chinese mainland, Europe and the Americas — has also exhibited at the CIIE for four consecutive years.

“In the second and third days of the exposition alone, we met about 20 to 30 existing and potential business partners,” said Toby Wong, the firm’s manager for Greater China. “Promising collaboration discussions are underway, and we look forward to turning these into concrete opportunities in the coming months.”

According to Wong, this year’s visitors are more prepared than before. They know which booths they want to talk to and engage in more focused, in-depth discussions, he said. “We’re pleased to see many visitors demonstrating genuine interest in our services rather than just browsing.”

He said mainland companies are increasingly exploring emerging markets beyond traditional Western destinations, and many of them use Hong Kong as a gateway for investment structuring and international operations.

Mainland enterprises now form a large share of CW CPA’s potential clients at the expo. To meet that demand, Wong said the company has tailored its offerings, such as expanding Chinese-language support and making advisory services most relevant to firms going global.

Attracted by “the enormous scale and the opportunity to get in touch with both mainland and overseas investors and collaborators”, MediOrigin Technology — a startup spun out of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, which is one of the city’s two universities with a medical school — debuted at this year’s expo.

“Hopefully, we can commercialize our company in the vast mainland market,” said biomedical engineer Chan Wai-shing.

Betting on the country’s fast‑growing healthcare sector, MediOrigin showed its robotic surgical assistant system that can shorten the operating time in endoscopic procedures and ease surgeons’ workload.

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“We’ve had productive discussions with dozens of potential partners, including distributors and investors, identified multiple promising pathways for collaboration, and established a list of contacts for us to follow up on,” Chan said.

irisli@chinadailyhk.com