Hong Kong’s financial system has learned from past crises, braced to beat shocks: Paul Chan

Hong Kong’s financial system has learned to better overcome external shocks and market volatility from the lessons of past global and regional crises, a top minister has told a forum in the US.

“Hong Kong is a small, fully open and externally oriented economy. That means we are prone to external shocks and volatility,” he said in his keynote speech at the Bloomberg Global Regulatory Forum in New York on Tuesday.

He cited the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, the global financial crisis in the 2000s and “the market squeeze during the onset of the Covid pandemic” as examples and good lessons to learn from.

Chan arrived in New York on Tuesday and will stay until Thursday as part of a trip that also took him to Peru earlier this week for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) meeting.

The official acknowledged Hong Kong had experienced “several challenging years” that also included social unrest, but emphasised the city was “back once again with a stable, welcoming and promising business environment”.