Hong Kong youth pursue entrepreneurial dream in Guangzhou

This December 2017 shows the Canton Tower and Zhujiang New Town in Guangzhou

Jason Choi, a young entrepreneur from Hong Kong, is pursuing his long-held dream to establish a creative advertising festival geared toward youth from Guangdong province.

The Hong Kong youth, who now runs his own business on the Chinese mainland, is building a bridge between the youth of Hong Kong and the mainland.

The Lingnan Youth Creative Week kicked off in late October in Guangzhou, capital of southern China’s Guangdong Province. The creative advertising festival, organized by Choi, attracted a group of insightful and creative young people from Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau and helped transform their ideas into practice.

“Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau share the same culture of Lingnan, which lays the foundation of the creative week,” Choi said.

In 2014, Choi was enrolled in Jinan University in Guangzhou to study advertising in the School of Journalism and Communication.

In Choi’s eyes, students from the mainland are hardworking and industrious, and Choi has learned a new way of thinking from them. “We live in different cities, each with their own advantages, so there is a better chemical reaction among us.”

While studying at university, he participated in various creative advertising competitions with mainland students and won several international awards including the Crystal Award of ADS STARS in Busan, the Republic of Korea.

“It was the combination of our ideas that helped us succeed,” he said.

After graduation, Choi threw his sights upon the broader start-up market in the Greater Bay Area. “I got the idea of starting my business in middle school but found it was not easy to do so in Hong Kong,” he said.

He decided to pursue entrepreneurship in Guangzhou and studied at Jinan University.

“Guangzhou gives a lot of support to new enterprises, and Hong Kong students have the same opportunities as their mainland counterparts,” he said.

After graduation, he set up his own studio with most of the members coming from Hong Kong.

Since the Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area was released in February, more and more youth from Hong Kong and Macau have set their sights on Guangdong.

In May, the Guangzhou government introduced its policies to support young people from Hong Kong and Macau to have careers in Guangzhou.

Guangzhou will strengthen its efforts to help boost innovation and entrepreneurship and set up a fund totaling 1 billion yuan (about 142 million U.S. dollars) to help Hong Kong and Macau youth at all entrepreneurial phases. Their start-up projects that land in Guangzhou can be given bonuses and subsidies worth up to 200,000 yuan.

“There will be more exchanges and communication between Hong Kong and Guangzhou. With policies in the Greater Bay Area being implemented, as entrepreneurs, we should take the lead,” Choi said. DB/Xinhua