As part of the celebration, the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in San Francisco also held a large-scale technology business seminar on September 21, 2006 featuring government and business leaders from Hong Kong and Silicon Valley.

Entitled “Hong Kong: Today’s Advantages for your Tomorrow in China”, the two-part seminar focused on how leading technology companies in the United States could utilize the resources in Hong Kong to get into the China market. At the seminar, Mr. Mike Rowse, Director-General, Invest Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, Mr. Carlos Genardini, CEO, Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation, and Mr. Nick Yang, CEO, Cyberport Management Company Ltd., highlighted Hong Kong’s strengths and technology infrastructure and elaborated the importance of these for U.S. companies looking for a conduit into China.

The latter part of the seminar was joined by Mr. Gregor Berkowitz, President, MOTO Development Group, Mr. James Lau, Founder, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, Network Appliance, Inc., Mr. Patrick Lo, Chairman and CEO of NETGEAR Inc., and Dr. Priscilla Lu, Chairman and CEO of ViDeOnline Communications Ltd. They shared their success stories from their companies’ globalization process using Hong Kong as the platform. They discussed the challenges and opportunities for setting up and managing Regional Headquarters, sales and marketing, distribution, and design operations in Hong Kong and Mainland China.

A gala dinner was followed after the two panel discussions. Mr. John Chen, Chairman, CEO and President of Sybase, Inc. was the keynote speaker. He talked about Hong Kong’s resilience and its relevancy to foreign companies and China.

In welcoming Mr. John Chen and the 400 guests at the gala dinner, Ms Doris Cheung, Director of the Hong Kong Economic and trade Office in San Francisco said, “The Government firmly believes that Hong Kong should play a proactive role in promoting technology development, in particular applied R&D and commercialization, which allow our economy to continue to grow and to move up the value chain. Our objective is to harness Hong Kong’s advantages in applied research, intellectual property protection, business-friendly environment and proximity to the manufacturing base in the Pearl River Delta Region, to thrive as a regional service hub.”