FHKI 60th Anniversary Commemorative Album

Hong Kong industrialists already encountered a number of major challenges in their production PRD base in the latter half of the 1990s. They had to tackle soaring production costs, shortages of labour and tightening of labour and environmental legislations, tax reforms and severe competition from local industrial enterprises. They reckoned the urgent need of undertaking measures to reform their traditional business models and manufacturing modes. It was timely that both the Central Government and the Hong Kong SAR Government launched a series of policies and measures to support enterprises to overcome the global economic downturn. Many of the Hong Kong industrial enterprises capitalised on the opportunities and made good use of the supporting policies and measures to undertake industrial upgrading and transformation by adopting new technologies, innovative design and novel and clean production techniques. Reinventing Industries (post-2000) Hong Kong industries continued to expand in the PRD region, both in scale and in production value in the first decade of the 21 st century. This has helped reinforce the status of the PRD region as the world’s industrial powerhouse. To tackle the increasingly stringent labour laws and cumulative impact of labour shortage and rising wages (double digit annual increase inwages), Hong Kong industries chose to leverage on automation so as to downsize their labour force, and to relocate labour intensive processes to inland provinces, Southeast Asian and African countries. On the other hand, it has also proven that design, creativity and automation can help conventional industries to move up the value-chain. More and more Hong Kong industrialists are employing these solutions to upgrade their business. In this respect, the FHKI in 2015 set up three new groups “Creative Industries”, “Design” and “Automation Solutions” with the aim to stimulate more synergy by facilitating these groups to interact with conventional industries so as to bring in new possibilities and capabilities. Two other groups “Fur and leather garments” and “Spectacles and optical products” were also added to facilitate the rendering of services to these two leading world exporters. Yet the global financial tsunami that broke out in 2008 was an impetus to new structural changes of the world’s industrial development. Driven by various strategies adopted by major industrial economies, including Industry 4.0 in Germany, re- industrialisation in Europe and Made in China 2025, information-based industrial infrastructure was being extensively constructed for the advent of an internet and intelligence-driven era. post-2000 香港工業總會六十周年紀念專集 58