YOUR CHAMBER
HK Dollar Peg: Here to Stay or Time for a Rethink? 10 January 2020 At the first event of the year for the Chamber, John Greenwood, architect of the Hong Kong dollar peg, presented to a soldout audience on the history and future of the Hong Kong dollar’s peg to the US dollar. Reviewing the history of the HK$ and its move from a silver standard to a floating rate and onto the US peg, Mr Greenwood remarked that the US$ peg has helped ensure that the HK$ has remained stable despite a number of external
pressures including the handover in 1997, the dotcom bubble, and SARS. Commenting on its future, Mr Greenwood explained that it would be unlikely to see a shift from the US$ to another currency such as the yuan, euro, or pound given the majority of all Asian transactions remain on one side at least in US$. Moreover, he added that a currency board model works best when linked to a fully convertible currency. Sponsored by
China’s Global Ambitions: From Trade War to Tech War 17 January 2020 In partnership with scoutAsia, we welcomed Jamil Anderlini, Financial Times’ Asia Editor, to share his insights on China’s technology sector and its impact on the rest of the world. Against a background of the US-China trade war, Beijing is in pursuit of global leadership in a growing number of technologies. China has some impressive stories including the celebrated high-speed rail which accounts for two-thirds of the world’s total high-speed railway networks. China’s state-owned rail company has around 50% of global market share, providing the same technology as Western and Japanese counterparts at a fraction of the price. In fact, China
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owns enough track to stretch from London to Beijing, and back – twice! In 2016, China spent more on importing microchips than it did on oil, remaining highly reliant on foreign companies to provide the technology. What’s interesting here is that China was still the biggest importer of oil globally. On the other hand, companies such as Alibaba and Tencent which are at the leading edge of e-commerce, have business models that are not yet replicable outside of China. This highlights that whilst China might be seen to be highly innovative, in some areas it remains fairly lowtech and highly labour intensive, but that is rapidly changing.
