About Chinese General Chamber of Commerce

Chinese General Chamber of Commerce

The Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, known by the abbreviation CGCC, is one of Hong Kong's oldest and largest chambers of commerce. Founded in 1900 by Ho Fook and Lau Chu-pak, two prominent leaders of the Chinese community during the colonial period, it is a non-profit organisation of local Chinese firms and businessmen based in Hong Kong. It is headquartered at 4/F, 24-25 Connaught Road Central, in Central, Hong Kong, and it has a membership of over 6,000, comprising association, company, individual and affiliate members. Its official website is cgcc.org.hk.

The Chamber describes its aim as serving the community and, advancing with time, maintaining Hong Kong's prosperity and stability — reaching out to the world with its roots in Hong Kong and backing from the mainland. It supports the HKSAR Government's administration and maintains close liaison with its departments. It holds representation in the Legislative Council of Hong Kong through the Commercial (Second) functional constituency, and in many other political sectors, including the Election Committee that elects the Chief Executive. It is one of the three founding members of the World Chinese Entrepreneurs Convention, and its community programmes, from the We Care We Share campaign to its youth internship and Young Astronaut schemes, give it a social presence well beyond trade promotion.

Founding in 1900 and its founders

The CGCC was founded in 1900, at a time when Hong Kong's Chinese merchants — by then the majority of the colony's commercial population — had no general chamber of their own. The older Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, founded in 1861, had admitted its first Chinese member companies in 1880, but the Chinese business community organised its own institution at the turn of the century.

Its founders, Ho Fook and Lau Chu-pak, were two of the most prominent figures of the colonial-era Chinese community: merchants, compradors and public leaders whose careers spanned business, charitable institutions such as the Tung Wah Hospital, and service on Hong Kong's councils. A chamber founded by leaders of that standing began with authority inside its own community, able to speak for Chinese firms and businessmen to the colonial government and, equally, to organise the community's own commercial and charitable efforts. That dual role — representation outward, organisation inward — has characterised the CGCC throughout its history.

Membership and organisation

At present the Chamber has a membership of nearly or over 6,000, comprising association members, company members, individual members and affiliate members — a structure that lets trade associations, firms and individual businesspeople all belong within one body. Reference entries list Dr Charles Yeung among its chairmen in earlier listings, and Dr Jonathan Choi headed the Chamber in the 2020s, leading, for example, its 26-member delegation of senior Hong Kong businesspeople — investors, financiers and realtors — to Dubai in May 2023.

The Chamber is a not-for-profit organisation. Its committees and delegations work across trade promotion, mainland liaison, community services and youth development. It maintains close liaison with HKSAR government departments and represents its members' views on economic and social policy, describing its platform as building a business, economic and trading platform for Hong Kong while safeguarding business interests.

Political representation: LegCo, Election Committee and advisory bodies

The CGCC's place in Hong Kong's political structure is formal and long-standing. It holds the Legislative Council's Commercial (Second) functional constituency seat: the Chamber's corporate and association membership elects the legislator for that constituency, giving the local Chinese business community a dedicated voice in the legislature through its own chamber.

Beyond LegCo, the Chamber is represented across the Election Committee responsible for the Chief Executive election, and its members serve on numerous government advisory bodies; reference entries name sectors including the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, information technology and broadcasting, and education and manpower. The CGCC is largely regarded as a pro-Beijing group within Hong Kong politics, a position consistent with its founding purpose of organising the Chinese business community and its close working relations with mainland institutions. Its leaders and members have historically also been involved in national bodies and mainland-Hong Kong liaison organisations, extending the Chamber's representative role beyond Hong Kong itself.

Founding member of the World Chinese Entrepreneurs Convention

The CGCC is one of the three founding members of the World Chinese Entrepreneurs Convention, the global gathering of Chinese business leaders founded to promote the economic network of Chinese entrepreneurs all over the world. In 1993 the CGCC hosted the second convention in Hong Kong. From 2005 to 2011 the Chamber acted as the secretariat of the convention, administering the global network from Hong Kong.

The secretariat role has continued in a successor form through the CGCC World Chinese Entrepreneurs Summit, the Chamber's own platform under the same mission: anchored in Hong Kong, building a worldwide network for Chinese entrepreneurs. For a Hong Kong chamber, this global Chinese-business network is a defining asset: it connects the CGCC's local membership to Chinese chambers and business communities across Southeast Asia, North America and beyond, in both directions — Hong Kong firms reaching outward, and overseas Chinese entrepreneurs entering Hong Kong and the mainland through Hong Kong.

Mainland integration: Belt and Road and the Greater Bay Area

The Chamber works closely on mainland-Hong Kong economic integration. It plays an active part in China's ongoing development and reform measures and its steady opening-up to the world, and it has strong, documented ties to mainland China through its support for the Belt and Road Initiative and the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Its recent focus, recorded in its 2023 cooperation with the Dubai Chambers, is advancing the globalisation of its members: the memorandum of understanding signed with Dubai Chamber of Commerce in May 2023, during a 26-strong CGCC delegation visit, aimed at strengthening economic cooperation and reflected the Chamber's use of Belt and Road-era partnerships to open Middle East markets to Hong Kong firms.

Practically, this work takes the form of delegations, business-matching, forums on Greater Bay Area opportunities, and liaison with mainland chambers and authorities at central and provincial level. For members — predominantly local Chinese firms, many of them family businesses and mid-sized companies — the Chamber functions as a bridge into mainland markets and policy processes that individual firms could not easily reach alone.

Community programmes: We Care We Share and youth schemes

The CGCC's community work is an established part of its identity. Its We Care We Share campaign organises charitable and community-care activities under the Chamber's name, continuing the tradition, set by its founders' generation, that a Chinese chamber's responsibilities include the welfare of the wider community.

Its youth programmes are equally distinctive. The Chamber set up training programmes including the Internship and Exchange Program for Tertiary Students, which places Hong Kong tertiary students in internships and exchanges connected with the mainland, and the Young Astronaut training programme, which takes Hong Kong young people into China's space-programme facilities and training experiences. Both schemes use the Chamber's mainland networks for educational ends: giving Hong Kong youth direct experience of the mainland's economy and its scientific institutions. Youth development, community care and business networking sit side by side in the Chamber's published programme, as they do in its summit materials.

Place among Hong Kong's chambers

Hong Kong's chamber system divides labour by constituency and history. The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce (1861) is the general, originally international chamber; the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce (1900) represents the local Chinese business community; the Chinese Manufacturers' Association (1934) and the Federation of Hong Kong Industries (1960) represent manufacturers and industry. The government designates five organisations to issue certificates of origin, and the CGCC is one of the five, alongside the HKGCC, the FHKI, the Indian Chamber of Commerce Hong Kong and the CMA — placing the Chamber inside Hong Kong's official trade-documentation system as well as its representative system.

The CGCC's distinguishing marks are its community rooting and its mainland and global-Chinese networks. Where HKGCC's founding story is international and generalist, the CGCC's is communal and network-based: founded by the Chinese community's own leaders, holder of the Commercial (Second) seat, founding member of the world convention of Chinese entrepreneurs, and secretariat of that convention for six years. Its membership of about 6,000 makes it, by headcount, the largest of Hong Kong's major chambers.

The CGCC today

Today the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce continues from 24-25 Connaught Road Central as a non-profit chamber of over 6,000 association, company, individual and affiliate members, representing local Chinese business in the Legislative Council and the Election Committee, running its We Care We Share community campaign and its youth internship, exchange and Young Astronaut programmes, and promoting Hong Kong-mainland integration, the Belt and Road Initiative and Greater Bay Area development through delegations, summits and partnerships such as the 2023 Dubai memorandum. Its official website is cgcc.org.hk, and its World Chinese Entrepreneurs Summit site documents its global network work.

For a directory of Hong Kong institutions, the CGCC is a significant entry: founded in 1900 by Ho Fook and Lau Chu-pak, it has organised Hong Kong's Chinese business community for more than 125 years, through the colonial era, the 1997 handover and the Greater Bay Area era, and it remains one of the principal bridges between Hong Kong business, the mainland and the worldwide Chinese entrepreneurial community.