MR CHAN KIN-POR (in Cantonese): Thank you, President. The SAR Government is striving to attract leading Mainland and overseas enterprises to settle in Hong Kong. It is believed that being able to attract technology enterprises related to digital security to develop in Hong Kong will be of great help to strengthening our digital security barrier. Will the authorities set any target in this regard? Are there any such enterprises among the leading enterprises that the authorities have contacted?
SECRETARY FOR INNOVATION, TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRY (in Putonghua): Over the past year and so since the establishment of the new-term Government, we have contacted numerous enterprises, many of which have relatively high requirements and expectations on cross-boundary data flow and related technologies. Earlier on, the SAR Government and CAC entered into an important Memorandum of Understanding, namely the “Memorandum of Understanding on Facilitating Cross-Boundary Data Flow within the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area”, which is crucial for promoting the high-quality development of GBA, better integrating Hong Kong into the national development and building Hong Kong into a distinctive data hub, thereby giving full play to our advantages under “one country, two systems”.
As far as the key issue of data security is concerned, we make considerations based on the two major aspects proposed in the Plan for Digital China, namely data protection and data circulation. The two are complementary to each other, for only strong data protection can facilitate greater openness and circulation of data, while greater openness of data hinges on the protection of relevant data. The SAR Government will closely follow these two major directions and make every endeavour to complete our work. Thank you, Mr CHAN.