Local firms look beyond mainland

HONG KONG: More than 40 percent of privately owned mainland businesses plan to go overseas in the next three years, according to an HSBC survey.

Of the 902 privately owned companies surveyed by HSBC and Fudan University in Shanghai, 43 percent said they were keen to expand overseas. The respondents are based mainly in the Yangtze River and Pearl River deltas.

Liang Xiaoya, assistant professor at Fudan University's school of management, said around 75 percent of the mainland businesses surveyed are privately owned and the majority had sales revenue of less than 50 million yuan.