Why Hong Kong Still Works as a Regional Base in 2026

Hong Kong's pitch to the world has narrowed to finance and capital markets. The government's own 2026 figures tell a broader story -- one that's genuinely relevant to any business, including research and professional-services operations, weighing where to base a regional presence.

The narrative gap worth checking against the data

I’ve operated in Hong Kong since 2010, through periods when the city’s standing as a regional base for international business was assumed without question and periods when it very much wasn’t. The current conventional wisdom sits somewhere in between: Hong Kong remains a genuine financial centre, the story goes, but has lost ground as a base for anything else — professional services, research operations, regional headquarters functions outside pure capital markets work. That narrative deserves checking against what Hong Kong’s own government data actually shows, rather than being repeated as settled fact.

What the government’s own figures show

Invest Hong Kong (InvestHK), the government’s investment promotion department, confirmed at its annual welcome reception on 25 June 2026 that it had assisted 413 overseas and mainland enterprises to set up or expand in Hong Kong during the first half of the year — a roughly 9-10% year-on-year increase in project count — with Chief Executive John Lee stating these firms are expected to bring in over HK$53 billion in foreign direct investment, up 36% year on year, and create more than 8,600 new jobs (HKSAR Government press release, 25 June 2026). Of the 413 enterprises, 60% came from the Chinese mainland; by sector, the top five were innovation and technology (93 companies), financial services and fintech (89), tourism and hospitality (55), transport, logistics and industrials (44), and business and professional services (39) — a genuinely multi-sector spread, not a finance-only story, directly from the government’s own breakdown rather than a secondary summary of it.

The same department’s official year-end results confirm the multi-year trend rather than a single strong half. For 2025 as a whole, InvestHK assisted a record 560 companies (up 4% year on year), bringing an estimated HK$69.4 billion in direct investment (up roughly 2%) and expected to create 10,748 jobs in their first year of operation — 57% more than the comparable 2024 figure (HKSAR Government press release, 26 January 2026). For 2024, InvestHK assisted 539 companies (up 41% year on year), bringing HK$67.7 billion in investment (a record at the time, up nearly 10% on 2023) and an expected 6,864 jobs (HKSAR Government press release, 20 January 2025). Company counts, investment values, and expected first-year job creation have each grown in every period measured across 2024, 2025, and H1 2026 — a directly sourced, consistent three-period trend rather than a single favourable data point.

The talent pipeline change that’s easy to overlook

A second, more specific data point worth flagging for any business considering staffing a Hong Kong-based regional research or analysis function: the Immigration Department’s Top Talent Pass Scheme (TTPS) — the primary visa route for high earners and graduates from eligible universities — had its aggregate list of eligible universities expand from 199 to 200 institutions, effective 1 January 2026, as confirmed directly by Hong Kong Talent Engage, the government office responsible for maintaining the list (Hong Kong Talent Engage official notice). This is a direct, practical signal about talent access: a wider eligible-university list means a broader pool of graduates from outside the small set of globally top-ranked institutions can access Hong Kong’s fastest visa route, which matters disproportionately for research and analytical roles where a narrower “top 20 university” filter often screens out strong regional candidates with exactly the market-specific language and cultural fluency a research operation needs most.

Two distinct visa pathways matter here, and they should not be conflated. The Immigration Department’s own TTPS guidance confirms Category A applicants (broadly, high earners without a university-eligibility requirement) may be granted an initial 36 months’ stay, while Categories B and C (degree-holders from eligible universities) receive 24 months (Immigration Department, TTPS official guidance). Separately, the General Employment Policy (GEP) — the standard sponsored-employment route for professionals whose skills are not readily available locally — normally grants an initial stay of up to 36 months, with subsequent extensions typically following a 3+3+2-year pattern (Immigration Department GEP guidance, as summarised and cross-referenced against official pages). The Immigration Arrangements for Non-local Graduates (IANG) — for graduates of Hong Kong’s own accredited programmes — currently grants an initial 24-month stay, confirmed directly on the Immigration Department’s own FAQ page, up from an original 12 months following a relaxation announced in the 2022 Policy Address (Immigration Department, IANG official FAQ). Together, TTPS, GEP, and IANG give a Hong Kong-based operation three distinct, genuinely workable pathways for building a locally based team rather than relying entirely on short-term secondments from elsewhere in a regional network.

Reading the finance-sector strength as infrastructure, not just a signal

It’s tempting to read Hong Kong’s strong 2026 capital-markets performance as relevant only to businesses actually operating in finance. That’s too narrow a read, but the underlying figures are worth citing precisely rather than approximately. Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing’s (HKEX) own year-end market statistics report puts total market capitalisation at HK$47,392.5 billion as at 31 December 2025, up 34.2% from HK$35,319.5 billion a year earlier, with average daily securities turnover of HK$249,820 million across 2025, up 89.5% — effectively doubling — from HK$131,825 million in 2024 (HKEX, Market Statistics 2025, official annual report (PDF)). A genuinely liquid, actively traded capital market of this scale is downstream infrastructure that supports the entire professional-services ecosystem around it: legal, accounting, consulting, and research firms serving finance clients all benefit from the sector’s health even when their own work has nothing to do with trading activity directly.

Where the honest limitations sit

None of this argues that Hong Kong is unambiguously the right base for every kind of regional operation. The InvestHK figures cited above are investment-promotion-department numbers, and any government department whose mandate is attracting investment has a structural incentive to present its own data favourably — worth naming plainly rather than treating official releases as neutral third-party statistics, even when, as here, they are the most directly verifiable source available. A genuinely cost-sensitive, single-market operation is likely to find Hong Kong’s cost base does not make sense compared to lower-cost alternatives elsewhere in the region; the data reviewed here speaks to Hong Kong’s strength as a cross-border coordination hub, not to its competitiveness on pure cost.

For a business — including a research or professional-services operation — that needs cross-border coordination, access to a widening talent pool under confirmed, current visa terms, and proximity to the mainland China market without being inside its regulatory perimeter, the government’s own 2024-2026 data supports a more specific and more current case than “Hong Kong is still fine for banks” alone.

A specific incentive worth knowing about for research-adjacent work

One further, narrower data point is worth flagging for research and analytical operations specifically, with an appropriate caveat attached. Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary, delivering the 2026-27 Budget on 25 February 2026, proposed refining and enhancing tax deduction arrangements for research and development expenditure specifically to strengthen scientific collaboration, technology transfer, and industry development between Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area — a proposal independently reported in consistent terms by multiple major professional-services firms following the Budget speech, including KPMG, PwC, and DLA Piper (KPMG, Hong Kong Budget Summary 2026-2027; DLA Piper, Key Tax Measures Proposed Under The 2026-2027 Hong Kong Budget). This is a Budget proposal, not yet enacted legislation as of this research date — a distinction worth stating plainly rather than presenting it as a settled tax rule — and it is aimed primarily at technology and life-sciences R&D rather than market research specifically. It nonetheless reflects a broader government direction, treating Hong Kong as a base for cross-border collaborative work rather than a purely domestic operation, that is directly relevant to any research function structured around coordinating fieldwork or analysis across the Greater Bay Area and wider mainland market from a Hong Kong base.

What this means for evaluating Hong Kong as a regional base

Setting aside investment-promotion framing entirely, the practical requirements for a research or analytical operation serving a genuinely regional client base are fairly specific: reliable, unrestricted data flow with both the mainland Chinese market and international clients; a time zone that overlaps meaningfully with both East Asian and European working hours; and access to bilingual or multilingual analytical talent comfortable operating in both Chinese-language source material and English-language client deliverables. Hong Kong’s common-law legal system, its position outside mainland China’s data-governance perimeter while remaining geographically and culturally adjacent to it, and its historical depth of bilingual professional talent address each of these requirements more directly than most competing regional base candidates — a structural fit that predates any single year’s investment headline, even as the government’s own 2024-2026 data happens to currently support the same conclusion.

Why Hong Kong Still Works as a Regional Base, Even for Businesses That Aren't in Finance