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HONG KONG: A major Asia-focused tech conference announced today that it is ditching Hong Kong in favor of Malaysia in a further blow to the Chinese financial center’s push to attract tech talent.
The annual RISE conference brings together CEOs, startups and investors and has been held in Hong Kong for the past five years.
But organizers said they would move their annual conference to Kuala Lumpur in 2022.
“The RISE organization in Kuala Lumpur will expand the event to an exciting region of Southeast Asia,” RISE co-host Casey Lau said in a statement.
The decision comes as major tech companies are concerned about Beijing’s accelerating crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong after the huge and sometimes violent protests for democracy last year.
In June, Beijing imposed a comprehensive national security law that gives authorities significant powers to access the company’s servers and networks.
The crackdown led the United States to declare that Hong Kong is no longer sufficiently autonomous from authoritarian China, which blocks access to many of the world’s leading tech companies.
After the law was enacted, major tech companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter said they were suspending requests from the Hong Kong government and law enforcement authorities for information on users.
Plans for an undersea data cable between Los Angeles and Hong Kong were also scrapped after the US government expressed fears that China could steal data from it.
RISE made no mention of Hong Kong’s rapidly changing political situation in its statement explaining the move.
“We look for the best houses to host our events and secure long-term agreements with the cities,” a company spokesperson told AFP.
