American business leaders are looking to use Hong Kong as a “springboard” for tapping markets in China and Asia despite geopolitical tensions amid a wider reassessment of the mainland’s technological innovation, the city’s finance chief has said.

Reflecting on his trip to New York and Washington last week, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po also said on Sunday that his exchanges would “lay the foundation” for further cooperation with the United States, even as Hong Kong got caught up in the rivalry.

Outside the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, Chan also took part in the annual dinner of the National Committee on US-China Relations, discussions with fund managers in New York, a round-table meeting with the Atlantic Council, and a lunch organised by the US-China Business Council.

Writing on his weekly blog, Chan said that he had briefed participants at the various events on Hong Kong’s latest developments, including in innovation and technology, the Northern Metropolis megaproject, and deepening integration within the Greater Bay Area.

“During the exchanges, many local business partners expressed that the leapfrog development demonstrated by mainland enterprises in various fields of innovation and technology this year has led them to reassess China’s technological capabilities,” he said.

Biomedicine in particular had emerged as a key area for expanded collaboration, as human health “transcends national borders and geopolitics”, Chan said.

They also hoped to use Hong Kong, with its familiar institutional framework and market environment, as a “springboard” to explore markets in mainland China and Asia and identify new opportunities for collaboration, he added.