Make Hong Kong China’s ‘space finance capital’, legal group urges Beijing

An independent legal group has proposed that Beijing designate Hong Kong as the country’s “space finance capital”, positioning the city as a gateway for commercial development of the sector under the national five-year plan.The Asian Academy of International Law also proposed in policy papers issued on Thursday that Hong Kong should enact a space asset registration and finance ordinance to provide legal certainty for the financing of such assets.The group pointed to Hong Kong’s key strengths as a world-class international financial centre, a common-law jurisdiction and a connectivity hub, and put forward a series of recommendations to leverage the city as the country’s strategic gateway for commercial space under the 15th five-year plan from 2026 to 2030.“Mainland China should provide the technology, manufacturing, licensing, and sovereign capability, while Hong Kong provides the capital markets, legal infrastructure, global connectivity, and international credibility to fund, structure, contract, and dispute-resolve China’s commercial space transactions at scale,” it said.Beijing’s 15th five-year development blueprint has elevated aerospace within the cluster of strategic emerging industries, positioning it as a key driver of new quality productive forces, which refers to productivity led by technological innovation that breaks away from the traditional economic growth and development model.Public interest in aerospace has grown in Hong Kong following the selection of Lai Ka-ying as the city’s first astronaut. She made her historic journey into space with the launch of the Shenzhou-23 mission in May.The academy proposed designating Hong Kong as the country’s “space finance capital”, with Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing serving as the preferred offshore listing platform for commercial space firms and the city’s funding structures in the fixed-income and structured-finance capital markets acting as an international capital gateway.