Chen Sheng
Struggling man·Positive youth
The harbor of "green" love
Interviews with Hong Kong youths8
Text and pictures/Guangzhou Daily all-media reporter Wang Na
Video clip/Guangzhou Daily all-media reporter Huang Hongbin
8 years ago, he got Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Youth Dream Factory free office key, becoming the first batch of Hong Kong youths to start a business in Qianhai ; 8 years later, he has become a maker for young people and has participated in the construction of 6 Shenzhen-Hong Kong entrepreneurial bases , serving more than 300 Hong Kong young people who came to start their own businesses in the Greater Bay Area.
His name is Chen Sheng, a young man born in the 1980s in Hong Kong and an iconic figure among Hong Kong young people starting businesses in the Greater Bay Area. He said: "Many young people in Hong Kong will ask me, what is the biggest attraction of Shenzhen? What is the best model for cooperation between Shenzhen and Hong Kong? What will the future Greater Bay Area look like? I think everyone will have their own answer. The best way to find the answer is to cross the Shenzhen River and use practical actions to participate and experience it.
Character introduction
The first batch of Hong Kong youths to start a business in Qianhai, Shenzhen
CEO of UNI Hong Kong Youth Entrepreneurship Space
Hong Kong Restart Alliance. Initiator, member of the Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Youth Affairs Professional Advisory Committee, Secretary-General of the Hong Kong Youth Professionals Alliance
Qianhai is the place where dreams begin
In December 2012, General Secretary Xi Jinping inspected Qianhai. Beside the Qianhai Stone, General Secretary Xi Jinping issued a call for reform and opening up to start again. That year, I had just founded a human resources training consulting company in Hong Kong with my friends. We traveled frequently between the mainland and Hong Kong. Shenzhen was the city where I stayed the longest. General Secretary Xi Jinping requires Qianhai to "rely on Hong Kong, serve the mainland, and face the world." It was when I saw this sentence that I thought of coming to Qianhai.
Today’s Qianhai is full of high-rise buildings and prosperous, but when I first arrived in Qianhai, there was still a large construction site around it, with only two roads and inconvenient transportation. In 2015, Qianhai was catching up with an unprecedented cross-border e-commerce development boom. Our company's initial main business was to solve the "last mile" of logistics and distribution and operate an imported snack e-commerce platform. As soon as
company opened its doors, many people came to inquire about cooperation, because many mainland companies that want to engage in cross-border e-commerce business lack sufficient overseas network resources. We used our previous experience to develop a cross-border e-commerce vertical search system. During this process, Qianhai’s business environment and related policies gave our team great support. Free venues, convenient financing environment, and various subsidies during the startup period made me realize the true meaning of Qianhai’s 12-character positioning of “relying on Hong Kong, serving the mainland, and facing the world.” After 6 months of operation, this e-commerce platform has directly connected to 212 large international suppliers, with more than 150,000 kinds of goods, completed 8,124 cross-border transactions, and indirectly incubated more than 140 cross-border e-commerce companies. The highest transaction total exceeded $34.5 million. Less than a year after starting its business, the company received an initial round of financing of 50 million yuan and successfully hatched out of the district three years later.
On October 24, 2018, General Secretary Xi Jinping came to the Shenzhen Qianhai Shekou Area of the Guangdong Pilot Free Trade Zone to inspect the development of Qianhai on the spot. As a representative of Hong Kong’s entrepreneurial youth, I reported to the General Secretary on my entrepreneurial situation in the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Youth Dream Factory. The General Secretary said that the Dream Factory is a place where dreams come true. The General Secretary also shook hands with us one by one and had a cordial conversation. This makes every one of us entrepreneurs feel very excited and gives us more confidence in starting a business in the Greater Bay Area. Carefully recalling the important speech of the General Secretary has great inspiration for our entrepreneurial development direction.
From young makers to makers of young people
General Secretary Xi Jinping said that young people are the future of the country. As an entrepreneur, I particularly understand Hong Kong youth, so I hope to do my best to help them integrate into the mainland to the greatest extent possible. When the Qianhai Maker Space of the Hong Kong Youth Professional Alliance was established, I took the initiative to ask Ying to be appointed as the Operations Director of the Maker Space and began to provide consulting services for Hong Kong young people to start their own businesses in Qianhai.
In fact, many young people in Hong Kong already have the elements to start a business in mainland cities: they have good ideas, core technologies, and strong execution capabilities. However, they are not familiar with the mainland market and hesitate to move forward.What I want to do is to help them get through the "last mile" of starting a business in the north, apply for free office space for them, and connect them with appropriate entrepreneurial policies.
In 2018, I went to Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to study for a master's degree in . While furthering my studies and understanding the latest developments in the field of science and technology innovation, I also have a deep understanding of the new needs of Hong Kong youth. I hope to share the entrepreneurial experience I accumulated in Qianhai with more people.
In 2020, I came to the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone in the Loop, adjacent to the Shenzhen River, and founded the "UNI Hong Kong Youth Entrepreneurship Space" to continue to provide professional navigation and incubation services for Hong Kong youth who start businesses in Shenzhen. I named the company "Harbor", hoping that Hong Kong youth would embrace the Greater Bay Area and also hope that this would become their harbor. Now it has signed contracts with more than 40 Hong Kong entrepreneurial teams.
Recently we are planning an event called "Shenzhen and Hong Kong youths read the same book". Reading is an important part of learning and a good way for Hong Kong young people to understand their motherland and integrate into the construction of the Greater Bay Area. We hope that young people from both places will find resonance in reading together, spark sparks of thought, and promote mutual learning and common growth.
In the past few years, I have met thousands of Hong Kong young people every year. Now my goal is to make "building a circle of friends of Hong Kong people in Shenzhen" even bigger and larger, so that many people like me can The same Hong Kong entrepreneurs set out from the Greater Bay Area to realize their entrepreneurial dreams.
Hong Kong youth are all from the Bay Area, and the Greater Bay Area can carry the grand dreams of our Hong Kong youth. I hope to link the Hong Kong youth entrepreneurship bases in Luohu, Futian, Qianhai, Nanshan and other places along the Shenzhen River to form a chain so that Hong Kong youth have more opportunities and choices.
The future of the Greater Bay Area is worth looking forward to.
Guangzhou Daily: What does the integrated development of in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area mean to individuals? What are your personal experiences?
Chen Sheng: I have been in the Mainland for more than 8 years. After the implementation of the " Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Development Plan ", I felt the rapid development of the Greater Bay Area, and gradually realized that there would be many challenges and opportunities among the cities in the Greater Bay Area. These opportunities are exactly what we young entrepreneurs have been looking for. We need to find these directions as goals in developing our careers in the future. I think this is the best inspiration for us from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
Guangzhou Daily: What are your expectations for the future development of Hong Kong and even the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area?
Chen Sheng: I have witnessed many achievements of Shenzhen-Hong Kong cooperation in the past few years. These experiences of Shenzhen-Hong Kong cooperation will have greater reference value in future inter-city cooperation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Because we happened to grow up in the integration of the Bay Area, and the spirit of cooperation is deeply rooted in our blood, we will be more sensitive than some other entrepreneurs and better able to seize these opportunities.
In the future, the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area will definitely be good. I see more and more young people in Hong Kong pursuing their dreams in this hot land, so I think the future is really worth looking forward to.
wishes
wishes that Hong Kong will have an even more extraordinary 25 years in the future. It can exert its energy in the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, develop side by side with other cities in the Greater Bay Area, and build our motherland into a better and better place. beauty.
