GBA Spotlight: Shenzhen business visit

Coordination and cooperation were essential to the success of Austcham Hong Kong’s GBA Spotlight: One Day Visit to Shenzhen, which was organised in conjunction with Austcham South China and the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand [CAANZ].

Patricia Slawinska, CEO of Austcham, and Elizabeth Chan, Head of CAANZ, welcomed everyone & gave some interesting facts about the companies we would be visiting. Senior corporate leaders from a wide range of industries attended, including from banking, accounting, consulting, legal, entrepreneurship, F&B, telecommunications, executive recruitment, government, & trade investment.

The timely departure at 8 a.m. demonstrated how keen everyone was, with many guests networking and reestablishing connections with colleagues on the coach before it departed. Visa-free entry for people with passports or those entering with China visas was simplified by an effective immigration process at the border.

In addition to the wonderful organizing personnel helping us, the bus was conveniently parked in the first bay as we exited immigration, making everything seamless. We were soon back on our way, taking in the Shenzhen skyline as we headed to our first on-site visit.

Site Visits

Our first stop was UBtech, a robotics business that is listed on the HK Exchange, which is integrating robots into our daily life. With some amazing examples  started for us to witness LIVE, the robotic demonstrations had us captivated.The depth of the company’s achievement & progress was demonstrated with a display of smart home goods that use AI robot technology.

Regional Sales Director Kevin Chen then gave an informative presentation in the boardroom. He discussed artificial intelligence (AI) education & some of the solutions that use robot hardware & AI technology, including components such as curriculum, teacher preparation and, instructional tools. Additionally, Kevin highlighted a first: when the business listed in Hong Kong, a humanoid robot actually hit the gong on the HKEx mainboard.

At the imposing foyer entrance hall of ByteDance (Douyin Group), we were given a tour of key turning points in the company’s development before moving on to another section of the expansive complex that featured a variety of collaborations & individual testimonials. Joe Chang, Regional Director of BytePlus Enterprise & Solutions, then presented an insightful overview of the AI journey with BytePlus.

Joe described the various models being used and how, in becoming more cost effective, have in turn, sped up the adoption of LLMs [large language models] for actual business. Some real-world use ByteDance case data was also shared, including partnerships with over 30+ external industries. He also mentioned how Doubao, the most widely used AI assistant app,has over 75 million users as of February 2025.

We were very grateful to ByteDance and UBtech for their individual presentations and for valuable time spent with us. To give our group a solid understanding, it was clear that numerous internal departments had to coordinate effort,time and work.

Panel Session-The GBA Tech Boom, Opportunities, Obstacles and Strategies

The Langham in Futian District, Shenzhen, hosted a delicious buffet luncheon with plenty of chance to network with attendees. Even though the site visits were completely booked well in advance of the event, the organizers thankfully,were still able to accept more people to the lunch and panel discussion.

The distinguished panel of speakers, which included:

• Jason Li, Managing Partner at LYP Consulting | Orange Juice Ventures,
• Hoi Tak Leung, Asia lead, Digital Experience team (Chief Digital Office) at Ashurst Hong Kong,
• William Lin, Senior Commercial Representative-Shenzhen at the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, and
• KH Chan, CTO of Beta Asia (a fintech with an AI wealth management solution) & Co-Chair of Banking & Finance Committee, Artificial Intelligence Association of Hong Kong,

was expertly moderated by Janette Li from Davies Collison Cave. The topic was “The GBA Tech Boom-Opportunities, Obstacles & Strategies”. Questions followed with  lively discussion after some pertinent insights were shared.

Once again, congratulations to Austcham Hong Kong with their various Committees who supported the event, in collaboration with CAANZ & Austcham South China for organising this educational and well-run event.

NB: The Publisher participated and paid for this event as a member of Austcham Hong Kong