Luohu and London eye opportunities in cooperation in tech and finance

LONDON, May 14, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Luohu, a district of Shenzhen, one of China's most dynamic city economies, organized an economic and trade promotion meeting in London on May 12th.

This event brought together officials and business representatives from both sides, and it serves to facilitate exchanges on financial innovation, and explores opportunities to expand cooperation in business, talent cultivation, life science and artificial intelligence.

With over 7,000 foreign-invested enterprises and nine foreign banks, Luohu has a vibrant financial sector with finance, business services, commerce and strategic emerging industry as pillar industries.

London, a world financial center, has a sound financial service system, playing an important role in Sino-UK cooperation.

So Luohu, which is committed to promoting consumption, service sectors, and integrated development with Hong Kong, has a huge potential to unleash in its cooperation with the UK, particularly London.

Luohu, as the UK side acknowledges, proves to be a launchpad for UK enterprises and investors to access the Chinese market, thanks to its good business environment, efficient government services and solid industrial base. 

In the conference, Luohu officials put forward proposals on deepening bilateral cooperation.

The district looks forward to carrying out innovative pilot projects with UK financial institutions in cross-border payment, green finance, asset management, etc., supporting them to establish cross-border investment funds, and supporting the City of London financial institutions to set up a Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area operation center in Luohu.

It is willing to provide UK brands with a new type of "front store and back warehouse" exhibition and sales space, support enterprises to achieve "Shenzhen-Hong Kong dual-city debut" through the Luohu.

The district is willing to establish connections with educational institutions in London and beyond, carry out cultural exchanges and academic cooperation, and jointly cultivate talents.

It invites UK pharmaceutical companies to build a Sino-UK joint laboratory to carry out joint research in cutting-edge fields such as gene therapy and AI-assisted diagnosis.

In the field of AI, Luohu is vigorously developing an AI industry cluster and plans to build a computing platform and digital application scenarios to provide a broad application space and test field for artificial intelligence technology. So the district looks forward to exploring new opportunities for cooperation in the field of AI with the UK and jointly promoting the innovation and application of AI technology.

The UK is China's third-largest trading partner in Europe, the second-largest investment destination and the third-largest source of foreign investment; China is the UK's largest trading partner in Asia. In 2024, the bilateral trade volume reached $98.4 billion.

The event witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding on cooperation, as well as exchanges between entrepreneurs and officials. Luohu officials held meetings with senior executives of the City of London, the UK-China Business Development Centre and The Chinese Chamber of Commerce in the UK, Hawksford, JP Morgan Chase in the UK, laying a foundation for future collaboration.