‘Two sessions’ 2025: call for Hong Kong to tap global role and grasp 5 key ideas

Chinese Premier Li Qiang has called on Hong Kong to deepen international exchanges and cooperation while faithfully safeguarding the constitutional order stipulated in the country’s constitution and the city’s Basic Law to ensure governance by patriots.

In the government work report he delivered at the opening session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing on Wednesday, the country’s No 2 official also reaffirmed Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” guiding principle and pledged to bolster the Greater Bay Area’s capacity for innovation.

Observers said Li’s emphasis this year underscored Hong Kong’s increasingly vital role in helping the country further open up amid intensifying Sino-US rivalry. In response, city leader John Lee Ka-chiu vowed to adopt “creative thinking” in further developing Hong Kong as an international hub for innovation and technology.

At the same time Li was addressing the nation’s political elite, American President Donald Trump was delivering a speech to the US Congress, a day after he imposed new tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada, triggering retaliatory measures.

In a deal mentioned by Trump in his speech, Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings agreed to sell its Panama Canal port operations to a BlackRock-led consortium following legal uncertainties in the country and increasing pressure from the White House.

Li told the NPC session that an “increasingly complex and severe external environment” could have a greater impact on China but the country was ready to work with the international community to promote “universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalisation”.