Xiaohongshu Opens First Office Outside Mainland in Hong Kong, Enhancing Cross-Border Brand Services.

Xiaohongshu opens first office outside Mainland in Hong Kong to accelerate cross-border commercialisation business development

Invest Hong Kong (InvestHK) announced today (June 7) that lifestyle community Xiaohongshu has opened an office in Hong Kong. This marks Xiaohongshu's first office outside the Mainland, facilitating enhanced services for cross-border brands and users.

Xiaohongshu held an opening ceremony today for its Hong Kong office, with the Financial Secretary, Mr Paul Chan, officiating and delivering a speech. He said: "We warmly welcome Xiaohongshu to establish an office in Hong Kong. Xiaohongshu's presence in Hong Kong carries significant values. First, it fosters closer connections with the Hong Kong community, offering new perspectives and channels for local businesses in product design, marketing and promotion. Second, as an international finance, trade and innovation and technology centre, Hong Kong can help Xiaohongshu grow its business and expand its global footprint. Third, leveraging Hong Kong's unique East-meets-West cultural characteristics and our global networks, Xiaohongshu can promote Chinese culture and products to the world, sharing the good stories of China. We also look forward to strengthening our collaboration with Xiaohongshu to enhance the experience of Mainland tourists visiting Hong Kong, enhance the visibility of Hong Kong's tourism, retail, dining and creative industries, and allow visitors to have an enjoyable experience that makes them want to return."

InvestHK actively attracts digital economy and cultural and creative enterprises from both the Mainland and global markets to establish their presence in Hong Kong. In the '2025-2026 Budget', the Financial Secretary proposed that the Office for Attracting Strategic Enterprises (OASES) will also strategically bring in more innovation-driven cultural and creative businesses to the city.

The Director-General of Investment Promotion at InvestHK, Ms Alpha Lau, said, "We are delighted to welcome Xiaohongshu's first office outside Mainland in Hong Kong, which fully demonstrates the city's strategic role as a 'super-connector'. As a leading lifestyle community from China, Xiaohongshu's presence will foster creative collaboration among local content creators, brands and organisations, and promote East-meets-West cultural exchanges and content marketing development among Hong Kong, the Mainland and the global markets."

Director-General of the Office for Attracting Strategic Enterprises, Mr Peter Yan, said: "Xiaohongshu's rapid establishment of its Hong Kong office demonstrates the speed of China's business adaptability. As a leading enterprise in creative industries and technology, Xiaohongshu is expected to integrate innovative technologies to accelerate the growth of the local creative industries ecosystem."

Xiaohongshu is not just a highly engaged lifestyle community; it has become users' major hub for consumption decision-making. Through images, texts and short videos, users share and discover inspirations related to fashion, beauty, travel, food and more, creating a seamless experience from product discovery to purchase.

The Chief Marketing Officer of Xiaohongshu, Ms Zhiheng, stated, "When Xiaohongshu was first founded in 2013, it established a deep connection with Hong Kong. Among the first seven guides on cross-border shopping we released, one was dedicated to Hong Kong. If we say Xiaohongshu has crafted a narrative of the era for the development of online communities, Hong Kong marks the beginning of this story."

The General Manager of Global Business Solutions at Xiaohongshu, Ms Qianyue, said, "By establishing our office in Hong Kong, we aim to better serve more clients, while accelerating the development of our brand marketing businesses."

Ms Qianyue added, "Hong Kong is not only an important market for us but also a vital bridge. The global business solutions team plays a dual role - helping overseas brands connect with Chinese consumers, while also supporting Mainland Chinese brands to expand into Hong Kong and global markets. In addition to serving local users, some team members will take on regional responsibilities to support business development across Asia and beyond. We are also partnering with local universities to offer job and internship opportunities, nurturing young talent with cross-cultural marketing expertise."

For more information about Xiaohongshu, please visit: www.xiaohongshu.com.

To download photos, please visit: www.flickr.com/photos/investhk/albums/72177720326653416.

Xiaohongshu opens first office outside Mainland in Hong Kong to accelerate cross-border commercialisation business development Source: HKSAR Government Press Releases

Xiaohongshu opens first office outside Mainland in Hong Kong to accelerate cross-border commercialisation business development Source: HKSAR Government Press Releases

Xiaohongshu opens first office outside Mainland in Hong Kong to accelerate cross-border commercialisation business development Source: HKSAR Government Press Releases

Xiaohongshu opens first office outside Mainland in Hong Kong to accelerate cross-border commercialisation business development Source: HKSAR Government Press Releases

Speech by FS at CUHK EMBA Annual Conference

Following is the speech by the Financial Secretary, Mr Paul Chan, at the CUHK EMBA Annual Conference today (May 9):

Professor Dennis Lo (Vice-Chancellor and President, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)), Professor Lin Zhou (Dean, CUHK Business School), Macy (Chairperson of Organizing Committee, Ms Macy Chan), Michael (Chairperson of Organizing Committee, Mr Michael Chan), CUHK EMBA alumni and students, business leaders, distinguished guests and friends,

Good evening.

Addressing a room full of Executive MBA students and graduates is both an honour and a privilege. There is a particular kind of ambition in this room — one that is not content with success alone, but driven to understand it more deeply, in the belief that better ideas lead to greater impact.

That kind of commitment — to learning, to growth, to asking harder questions — is precisely what today's conversation is about.

The theme of this conference, which focuses on innovation and agile leadership, could not be more timely. Most of us here have lived through the Internet age and the smartphone revolution, which made communication faster and more seamless than anyone had imagined.

Today, the rise of AI places us at a more fundamental tipping point. Technology is not merely changing the answers — it is redefining the questions themselves.

Consider what is already within reach. An AI assistant can learn your preferences, curate a personalised shortlist, and simply ask for your confirmation. We should even ask whether the smartphone and the search engine will remain our primary gateways to the digital world, or whether something altogether new is already taking shape.

To draw an analogy, the power of technology does not lie in drawing the old map with greater precision. It lies in revealing how much of that map remains uncharted — and in showing us that entirely new maps, with new co-ordinates, are being drawn.

This redefinition is unfolding across three dimensions simultaneously.

First, the redefinition of products. Products are no longer discrete, standalone objects. A smart car is a vehicle, but also a mobile platform for data. An insurance policy can be a contract, but equally a dynamic reflection of health data. Innovation today is born from cross-sector convergence and continuous evolution.

Second, the redefinition of services. Services are no longer delivered solely by enterprises. They emerge from collaborative networks of people and AI. But the more profound shift is in what customers now expect. In the past, good service meant reaching the right person quickly. Today, customers expect a solution that anticipates their needs before articulating them. This requires a new architecture of service delivery: human and machine, with AI handling the scale, the speed, and the personalisation that no human team alone could sustain.

Third, and most importantly, the redefinition of business models. In the past, we sought optimal solutions within established frameworks — when demand rose, we expanded capacity; when service needs grew, we opened more branches. Technology invites us to break out of those frameworks entirely. Intelligent manufacturing means that "economies of scale" is no longer the only answer; flexible supply chains have made customised, on-demand production the new normal.

These three redefinitions are opening a commercial frontier unlike anything we have seen before. But if the benefits of technology accrue only to a small circle, its power remains fundamentally constrained. This brings me to the second message I want to leave with you today: inclusivity.

Inclusivity is not charity. Yet it is the smartest business strategy available. The unmet needs of the broader public represent the largest and most underserved market opportunity in existence. When you make quality healthcare, education and financial services accessible and affordable to ordinary residents, you are not serving a group in need of handouts — you are unlocking a vast market that traditional business models have consistently overlooked.

Hong Kong has a distinctive role to play here. We can be a co-architect of standards, a hub for capital, and a bridge between innovation and real-world deployment — from clinical validation of smart healthcare, to green technology financing, to regulatory sandboxes for fintech. Our contribution draws not only on institutional strengths and international networks, but on our genuine commitment to broad-based participation.

Yet inclusive products and services are only the first step. The deeper dimension is empowerment.

History reminds us that the dividends of technological revolution need to be actively guided to reach the many. In the age of steam, and again in the Internet era, early gains concentrated among capital owners and top-tier talent. But today we have the opportunity to write a different story. AI, as an amplifier of human capability, is already enabling what was previously unimaginable: a solo entrepreneur, with the right tools and the right vision, can build a unicorn.

In other words, the unit of competitive advantage is shifting — from the size of your team to the skill with which you orchestrate your tools.

Our mission should be to make that shift available to everyone. To turn individual readiness into collective prosperity, and to ensure that the productivity gains of AI flow broadly across the society.

This is precisely why, in this year's Budget, I placed such emphasis on the "AI Training for All" initiative.

We are not trying to turn everyone into an engineer. We are ensuring that workers, managers, SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) owners, and ordinary residents become capable collaborators with AI: people who can access it, use it effectively, and put it to work as their assistant.

That may sound ambitious, but consider this: if AI can one day be as intuitive as the smartphone, then mass adoption is not difficult to imagine at all. Just as computers once migrated from specialist facilities into offices and homes, AI will find its way into everyone's daily work and life.

For business leaders, it may be tempting to think of AI as "digital employee" that can replace existing workers. But think of a different framing: equipping your workforce with powerful digital assistants can achieve productivity gains, while also freeing your people to do what humans do best — create, imagine and innovate.

Companies that take those extra steps, and think those extra moves ahead, will find that an empowered workforce is also a more innovative one.

All in all, the power of technology must ultimately be measured by its contribution to inclusive growth. And inclusive growth, in the end, depends on, yes, commercial acumen — but also empathy, compassion, and the conviction that a rising tide should lift all boats. I can see that those qualities live in this room.

I will close with this thought. Someone once joked that economists know the price of everything and the value of nothing. With AI, let us never fall into the same trap — in our race to price every efficiency gain, let us not lose sight of the deeper value we are trying to create: a society where the fruits of innovation are broadly shared, and where technology lifts not just the fortunate few, but everyone willing to reach for it.

So here is my ask: let us grow the pie together. And make sure we cut it well.

Thank you very much.

Source: AI-found images

Speech by FS at CUHK EMBA Annual Conference Source: HKSAR Government Press Releases

Speech by FS at CUHK EMBA Annual Conference Source: HKSAR Government Press Releases

Source: AI-found images