Japanese businessmen and travellers encouraged to visit Hong Kong (with photos)
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     The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Tokyo (Tokyo ETO) celebrated the Year of the Horse with more than 500 guests from the Japanese political and business circles, academia, the media and cultural groups at a spring reception in Tokyo today (February 13).

     In her opening remarks, the Principal Hong Kong Economic and Trade Representative (Tokyo), Ms Sally Wong, encouraged Japanese businessmen and travellers to visit Hong Kong.

     "According to a survey by Invest Hong Kong, Japanese companies have become the largest group of overseas companies in Hong Kong, overtaking those from the United States. Many small and medium-sized Japanese companies have chosen Hong Kong as their first destination overseas.

     "Hong Kong people's appetite for Japanese food is so great that Hong Kong takes up more than one-fifth of Japanese food and agricultural exports, and continues to be the largest overseas market for such exports," Ms Wong said.

     She also cited the surge of almost 55 per cent in the number of Hong Kong visitors to Japan (745,800) in 2013 as another indication of the close bilateral relationship. Ms Wong extended a warm welcome to the Japanese people to travel to Hong Kong, whether for business, for study or for pleasure.

     Ms Wong said that Hong Kong, as a Special Administrative Region of China, enjoys a high degree of autonomy and has remained a vibrant, cosmopolitan, free and open society.

     She noted that apart from being an international business and financial centre, Hong Kong is also a city in which the arts and culture are flourishing. It has now become one of the largest art auction centres in the world.

     Several works of Chinese calligraphy from the Jao Tsung-I Academy were exhibited at the reception. They were selected from "Essays of a Wanderer", a collection of poems written by Dr Peter Wong that were inspired by his extensive travels around the world and artistically rendered by six calligraphers.

     The spring reception was jointly organised by the Tokyo ETO, the Hong Kong-Japan Business Co-operation Committee and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council.

Ends/Thursday, February 13, 2014
Issued at HKT 20:15

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