Riding the livestreaming digital wave(3)

Bay Area opportunities

Cheng recently returned from a fruitful trip to northwestern China, including Gansu and Shaanxi provinces — homes to a wealth of ancient Chinese historical sites.

He stressed that the journey would not have been a smooth ride two years ago when it was not possible to buy a ticket from an automatic ticketing machine at a train station using a mainland travel permit for Hong Kong and Macao residents. They had to queue up at the counter to get their tickets.

The conundrum was soon solved with residents from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan being allowed to apply for residence permits on the mainland if they've lived, worked or studied there for more than six months. The new permit, which grants them the same rights and treatment as those of mainland residents in the use of public services, saves Cheng and others like him the hassle of queuing up at the counter.

According to the Hong Kong Special Administration Region government, more than 200,000 Hong Kong people had applied for the permits as of September last year.

Other favorable policies introduced by the mainland authorities have been immensely helpful to startups like Cheng's.

His company's premises, located at an industrial park in Shenzhen's Longhua district, carries a monthly rent of 65 yuan per square meter. The Longhua government provides a subsidy of 40 yuan per square meter to all eligible companies, making Cheng's monthly rent at only 4,500 yuan. "This has greatly reduced the burden of my starting a business," says Cheng.

The local authorities would visit startups there and ask them what they would need, "putting themselves in our shoes" when implementing policies, says Cheng.

With Shenzhen set to launch a new round of reforms in the next five years. Cheng says he looks forward to seeing some relaxation of quota restrictions on foreign exchange, which would allow his company to expand cooperation with global partners.

The online trend in the Bay Area has given fresh impetus to more young people born and bred in Hong Kong.

Yeung Ka-fai, who will graduate in 2022 from the Fujian University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, has also set his sights on the burgeoning online e-commerce business as he believes it's "in trend".

He aims to create an online to offline (O2O) platform to match TCM-related healthcare services provided by practitioners to cope with rising market demand.

Yeung joined a trainee program for livestreaming e-commerce initiated by the Hong Kong e-Commerce Research Centre this year to give him a head start in building his career in the domain.

He has been trained in all-around skill sets, including how to resonate with target audiences, thereby leveraging livestreaming platforms like Taobao Live to bolster sales for their businesses.

In a report on Hong Kong's current information and technology status and future prospects — Realizing Hong Kong's Innovation Potential in the Greater Bay Area — Naubahar Sharif, associate professor of social science and public policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said that to catch up with the Chinese mainland in the new economy, greater attention should be paid to promising strategic areas, such as e-commerce, to facilitate collaboration in innovation with enterprises and institutions in the Bay Area.

The Bay Area, he argues, remains the best bet for young Hong Kong people in unleashing and realizing their innovation potential.

Having made a mark in livestreaming e-commerce with more than 30 million engagements, Cheng persistently sticks to his mantle when setting foot in the digital media — going to great lengths to promote the Bay Area to Hong Kong's younger generation. "In so doing, we intend to showcase the Bay Area's development in the form of short videos."

He hopes to use his tried-and-true experience to paint a brighter picture for his peers in Hong Kong to go to the Bay Area and get hands-on experience themselves.