Q1:

AI technologies like DeepSeek are gaining significant attention recently. How can industries effectively integrate AI to boost productivity and foster high-quality growth? 

Artificial Intelligence is the driving force for productivity. The technology is universally applicable to different applications. Be it industry, be it medicine, be it education, be it government. You can understand how this technology enhances productivity, whatever trade that you're in. I'm very glad to see that we have Deepseek coming in at the beginning of this year. 

But ChatGPT is a product. Firstly, it is not open source, that means not everyone can actually get access to that. The second thing is, even if you can get access to it, it can be quite expensive as well. In contrast, when we look at DeepSeek. It's  open source. It can do the job at 10 % that of the costs. This is a big breakthrough and this helped a lot in promoting the new innovative, productive forces in China and in Hong Kong.

Q2:

As China’s most international city, how can Hong Kong harness AI and its strategic role in the Greater Bay Area to address economic challenges and stimulate growth locally and nationally?

The government has actually urged civil servants or departments to use AI and that will increase the productivity of the government.

At last year’s current budget, we may not be in a very healthy situation, i.e. we are in deficit somehow, but even that, we should not forget about our economic growth. In order to have economic growth, you need innovation. In the budget, I think the financial secretary did a good job. Sort of supporting innovation development, spending some money on it. 

A small place like Hong Kong, we actually have five high quality universities. We should make good use of it. We can do good research, produce good ideas, good technology, and good innovation. We have to put them into practice. 

In order to facilitate that, I think places like Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Dongguan…have a larger market than we do. When you go overseas, you may need to have some financial support or investments. Then you may come back to Hong Kong again, to get international companies, investors, venture capitalists. This actually has been the value chain that we have been working on in the past few years in the Greater Bay Area. Namely, we will have Hong Kong as the research hub to do the R&D. And then we'll move the technology into the Greater Bay Area in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Dongguan, for example, for proof of concepts.

And the 4th part is actually internationalization. We come back to Hong Kong to get financing in order to go abroad for the overseas international market. In fact, when you look at what happened last year, after the Two Sessions or even in this year's Two Sessions, the central government also emphasized a lot of going out, internationalization. I think the role of GBA and Hong Kong, in particular, will be very useful to that.