Press Release

The 6th HKU Quarterly Forum on Chinese Economy, hosted by HKU Business School’s Institute of China Economy (ICE), in collaboration with the Tsinghua Alumni Association of Hong Kong, was held on 16 April. The Forum brought together renowned experts and industry leaders to examine the growth engines of China’s economy, as well as the related policy directions and outlook under the ever-changing global landscape. Speakers shared valuable insights on the current tariff war, trade war, China’s real estate economy and the challenges and opportunities facing China’s macroeconomy. Held at HKU iCube, the Forum brought together a diverse audience of industry leaders, academic experts, alumni and students, with nearly 230 people in attendance.

HKU Business School released a Comprehensive Evaluation Report on the Image Generation Capabilities of Artificial Intelligence Models, providing a systematic assessment of 15 text-to-image models and 7 multimodal large language models (LLMs). The results showed that ByteDance’s Dreamina and Doubao, as well as Baidu’s ERNIE Bot ranked among the top performers in terms of image content quality for new-image generation and image revision. However, despite DeepSeek having attracted global attention, its newly released text-to-image model, Janus-Pro, did not perform as well in new-image generation. HKU Business School researchers also found that while some text-to-image models excelled in content quality, their performance in safety and responsibility was significantly lacking. In general, multimodal LLMs demonstrated better overall performance compared to text-to-image models.

The 5th HKU Quarterly Forum on Chinese Economy, hosted by HKU Business School’s Institute of China Economy (ICE), in collaboration with the Peking University Alumni Association (Hong Kong), concluded successfully on 23 January. The Forum gathered prominent economists and industry leaders to examine the implications of China’s policy directions to the global economy and the current hot issues in the Chinese economy.

“The Future of Hong Kong Economy Conference 2025”, organised by HKU Business School and co-organised by the Hong Kong Institute of Economics and Business Strategy, concluded successfully on 16 January. The conference gathered esteemed scholars, policymakers and industry leaders to engage in dynamic discussions and examine strategic pathways for achieving sustainable economic development in Hong Kong. This year, the conference invited Professor James A. ROBINSON, Awardee of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics, as the keynote speaker.

HKU Business School today unveiled the “Hong Kong Economic Policy Green Paper 2025” (“Green Paper”). This comprehensive document delves into various facets of Hong Kong's economic domain, from fiscal deficits, stock market dynamics, the MPF system, housing concerns, to the exploration of novel pathways for fostering a vibrant startup ecosystem. Moreover, the Green Paper also scrutinizes Hong Kong's role within the global supply chain, advancements in AI development, and the implications of climate risks on the city's economic future.