Hong Kong's First Five-Year Plan Unveiled! The Healthy Greater Bay Area Ushers in a Golden Five Years | Efung Knowledge Planet

Date： 2026-09-17

Full text: approx. 2,191 Chinese characters | Reading time: approx. 3 minutes

On September 16, John Lee, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, announced the First Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (2026–2030) (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan") at the Legislative Council meeting, and subsequently delivered his fifth Policy Address during his term.【1】

This is the first five-year plan formulated since Hong Kong's return to the motherland.

When explaining the relationship between the two documents, John Lee stated: The Plan is the blueprint for Hong Kong's economic and social development over the next five years, serving as a forward-looking, strategic, and directional guiding document; the Policy Address is the Chief Executive's annual report on the implementation of the five-year plan, as well as the annual policy priorities and major projects in response to actual circumstances. The two are interconnected and closely related—one governs five years, the other governs the current year; one sets the direction, the other focuses on implementation.

For the biopharmaceutical industry, these two documents contain a clear thread: the Plan proposes to proactively align with the development of the "Healthy Greater Bay Area," using the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Medical Specialist Training Center as an entry point to build a new pattern of specialist training featuring "Shenzhen-Hong Kong linkage and Greater Bay Area integration."【2】

I. A Plan Aligned with the National "15th Five-Year Plan"

The Plan is divided into 7 sections and 28 chapters, totaling approximately 60,000 Chinese characters, with 105 indicators formulated, covering different areas. These include 22 main indicators listed in Section I, and 57 and 26 work indicators respectively listed in various columns and chapters. The five major goals include: new breakthroughs in economic development; continued enhancement of international competitiveness and influence; accelerated and more efficient construction of the Northern Metropolis; significant improvement in people's livelihood and well-being; and major progress in integrating into and serving the overall national development strategy.【3】

What is noteworthy for the industry is that the Plan explicitly states in the innovation and technology chapter: "Accelerate the construction of an international medical innovation hub. Build and improve clinical trial infrastructure and digital platforms, and fully implement the docking of clinical trial resources between Hong Kong and Shenzhen." Medical innovation is precisely one of the most substantively emphasized key directions in this innovation and technology blueprint.

The theme of the Policy Address is "Pursue the Overall Situation with a Long-Term Vision, Open a New Chapter with Reform, Promote Development and Create Opportunities, Benefit People's Livelihood and Move Toward the Future." The blueprint provides direction, and the annual report provides concrete measures—this policy arrangement regarding medical innovation covers almost every link in a complete industrial chain.【4】

II. From HK$900 Million to the "One Institute, One Center"

There is an unavoidable reality in innovative drug R&D: no matter how good the molecule, if it cannot pass through clinical translation, it remains merely a paper in the laboratory.

The first step is money. In response to this pain point, the Policy Address has put forward concrete arrangements—the SAR government will allocate a total of HK$900 million over the next three years to continuously fund innovative medical research with translational potential through the Health and Medical Research Fund, focusing on areas such as cancer prevention and treatment, clinical trials, and digital healthcare.【5】

With funding in place, the next step is to address talent. Hong Kong will establish an "International Clinical Trial Academy" next year and build a "Greater Bay Area Clinical Research Talent Reserve." Clinical research capability, in the final analysis, is a matter of human capability. A clinical trial talent pipeline oriented toward international standards is the infrastructure for Hong Kong to move from a "financial highland" to a "medical highland."【6】

Funding and talent must ultimately be anchored on platforms. The Plan provides specific arrangements: with the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area International Clinical Trial Institute in the Hong Kong Park of the Hetao area as the core, it will leverage the "one institute, one center" synergy with the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area International Clinical Trial Center in the Shenzhen Park; fully implement the docking of clinical trial resources between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and enhance the one-stop service platform.【7】

Reform of the regulatory system completes the final link in this chain. Over the past three years, Hong Kong has introduced the "1+" new drug approval mechanism and implemented the "first-tier approval" for new drugs in phases; within this year, a "Medical Device Regulatory Center" will also be established, with the long-term goal of becoming an internationally recognized authoritative regulatory body for drugs and medical devices.

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Photo: Hong Kong

For innovative drug and medical device companies, this means an unprecedented combination: conducting international-standard clinical trials in Hong Kong, obtaining internationally recognized registration, accessing market scale in the Greater Bay Area, and realizing capital returns on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. All four links form a closed loop within a single small region—a rarity globally.

III. The Capillaries of Cross-Border Healthcare Are Being Unblocked

If the "international medical innovation hub" is the skeleton, then the "Healthy Greater Bay Area" is the blood circulation system that brings the skeleton to life. At this level, the Plan and the Policy Address are highly consistent in direction. Below are some specific policy directions promoting the implementation of the "Healthy Greater Bay Area":【8】

Cross-border elderly care: Expand the Guangdong Residential Care Home Scheme to more mainland cities in the Greater Bay Area.
Expand the "Guangdong Residential Care Home Scheme" to more mainland cities in the Greater Bay Area, and extend the service points of the "Elderly Health Care Voucher Greater Bay Area Pilot Scheme" to the "Community Health Centers" of medical institutions under the current scheme, expanding coverage.
Cross-border medical convenience: Enhance primary healthcare services and increase outpatient and night clinic quotas.
Starting next year, increase the Hospital Authority's family medicine outpatient quotas by approximately 220,000 per year, including approximately 10,000 night clinic quotas. At the same time, strengthen preventive screening and care services for disadvantaged groups at selected family medicine clinics, targeting the "three highs," hepatitis B, and women's health.
Accelerate cross-border medical record interoperability: Expand cross-border medical record interoperability to facilitate cross-border healthcare collaboration.
The Federation of Trade Unions agrees with the government's further promotion of private healthcare providers entering data into the Electronic Health Record Sharing System and expanding cross-border medical record interoperability. As Greater Bay Area integration accelerates, more and more Hong Kong residents choose to work across borders or retire in mainland cities. Expanding medical record interoperability can eliminate cross-regional healthcare barriers, avoid duplicate examinations for patients, and also help promote Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao cross-border healthcare collaboration.

The cross-border flow of medical resources and rules, once scattered pilot programs, is now written into the Plan and the Policy Address, becoming an institutionalized long-term arrangement. For investors in the healthcare industry, institutional certainty is precisely what is most scarce at present.

IV. A Tale of Two Cities: Shenzhen and Hong Kong

In this blueprint belonging to Hong Kong itself, Shenzhen's weight is particularly prominent.

According to media reviews including Southern Daily, the Plan mentions Shenzhen-related expressions more than 100 times: "Shenzhen" 18 times, "Shenzhen-Hong Kong" 37 times, "Hetao" 30 times, "Qianhai" 12 times, and also mentions Deep Bay, Yantian, Huanggang Port, Wutong Mountain, etc.; if "Hong Kong-Shenzhen" (Hong Kong-Shenzhen Western Railway, Hong Kong-Shenzhen Port Economic Belt, etc.) is included, Shenzhen-related expressions total more than 110. According to incomplete statistics, Shenzhen's "15th Five-Year Plan" also explicitly mentions Hong Kong more than 130 times. In their respective plans, the two cities of Shenzhen and Hong Kong mention each other more than 100 times.【9】

This high-frequency mutual reference is not merely a coincidence at the textual level; it is being transformed into tangible opportunities for institutions rooted in the Greater Bay Area—as a professional investment institution rooted in Shenzhen and deeply engaged in the biopharmaceutical field for more than ten years, Efung Capital began laying out global high-quality biopharmaceutical industry investments in 2017, advancing both domestic and overseas investments in parallel. To date, multiple portfolio companies such as Ascentage Pharma and Harbour BioMed have successively entered the international stage through the Hong Kong capital market; portfolio companies such as Trinomab and Healthgen Biotechnology have opened new capital channels through the STAR Market, echoing the Hong Kong market.

The biopharmaceutical industry in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has never been a single-choice question between Shenzhen or Hong Kong, but a tale of two cities—Shenzhen has a complete advanced manufacturing industrial chain, targeted support for biopharmaceuticals and high-end medical devices through the "20+8" industrial cluster policy, and an active early-stage innovation ecosystem; Hong Kong has internationalized clinical resources, a regulatory system aligned with global standards, and mature biotechnology financing channels, and now, with the addition of a top-level architecture at the five-year plan level, the two cities, separated by a river, are piecing together each other's strengths into a complete industrial map.

Precisely because of this, from the Plan to the Policy Address, what Hong Kong offers is not merely policy text, but certainty for the next five years. When the channel for innovation becomes an institution, long-term investment gains longer-lasting friends.

The direction is set, the path is clear. In the future, Efung Capital will continue to accompany China's biopharmaceutical innovation forces with professionalism and patience, on this fertile ground, turning blueprints into drugs, into medical devices, and into accessible treatment solutions for patients.

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The content of this article represents solely the views of the Company based on current publicly available information and materials provided by portfolio companies. It does not constitute any investment advice, medical advice, or guarantee of specific corporate performance. Investing involves risks; market entry requires caution. Readers should make independent judgments based on public information. Unauthorized reproduction or use for commercial purposes is prohibited.

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