Hong Kong Cannot Use Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini

Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini are all unavailable in Hong Kong. There are services that buy US cards on your behalf so you can get around it.

An AI Galapagos

Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini are all still unavailable in Hong Kong. A VPN works, but you need a US credit card, so there are services that will buy one on your behalf.

Most people have no VPN and route through proxy platforms instead. Unable to use US models and awkwardly placed for Chinese ones, he called the situation an AI Galapagos.

Chinese models are reachable, and he noted they often return better insight on Asia-specific research than the Western ones do.

A non-engineer building the whole thing

The striking part was that he is not an engineer and builds everything himself.

He left a crypto company last November with about eight thousand dollars in government support, which he said covers more than a year of AI costs. With that he runs marketing automation, product development, and investor decks alone. Presentations in five minutes, prototypes on his own.

People around him saw it and were impressed enough that he now runs AI training classes, and he has consulting work lined up with a Chinese manufacturer on internal operations.

One story captures the shift. He built a maritime intelligence tool for a friend at a law firm, and the reaction was this: we considered hiring an engineer but the cost was too high, and since you have already built it, we will license it.

Buying enterprise AI or hiring a developer is now sometimes slower than a domain expert building it directly.

Adoption outside tech circles is still slow, which is why he thinks this is the window. Most people have no idea how easy these tools have become.

How China grows differently

He gave four reasons.

Sustained state investment. The Hong Kong and Shenzhen corridor leads the world in patent volume and robotics research, following more than a decade of government funding.

Brutal internal competition. Build something novel in Hong Kong and a mainland company will copy it and push harder, faster, bigger. Local food delivery is the example: a Chinese-operated service entered, offered free delivery to every neighborhood shop, and displaced the incumbent within a year.

"There are three ways to win. Faster, cheaper, or more end to end. Storytelling and branding are what Americans think about."

Density of hustle. Out of 1.4 billion people, an enormous number are doing whatever it takes. The streets are full of delivery riders and everyone is grinding.

Smartphone-native from the start. Twelve years ago, grandparents in rural provinces were already using mobile payments and video calls. Credit card adoption came late and the country simply skipped that stage. So when news breaks that the government is putting AI tools in the hands of rural farmers, the access layer was already there.

The soft power ceiling

The weakness is clear, and locals know it. The technology leads while trust and branding do not cross the border. The interface conventions read as distinctly local, and that alone becomes a barrier for foreign consumers.

In consumer products, Korean and Japanese brands still carry a premium. Korean-style bakeries draw lines in Shenzhen. French-style bakeries do well in Hong Kong. Coming from abroad is itself the premium.

Which produces an interesting workaround. Hong Kong companies now establish entities or trademarks in Korea, Japan, Singapore, or Taiwan first, then enter Hong Kong from there. It reads as not-Chinese for foreign investors while borrowing Korean or Japanese brand premium in the mainland market.

Europe is not looking at Asia

The reverse also came up. British brands are fixated on the US. Cover the home market, then go to America. Asia is not on the list.

But trends already saturated in the West are often still open in Asia, and purchasing power keeps rising. He recommended Asia to several of them and most did not listen. Too fragmented, too many languages, historically weaker spending. That last part is changing and they have not noticed.

Which is why Hong Kong and the region are full of European-run marketing agencies helping European brands enter Asia. That market looks ready to be turned over too.

What only a person can make

The conversation ended where these usually do. However much the model raises the quality of production, what people consume is not only the output but the person behind it.

He reached the same place. Moving from crypto to AI taught him that execution goes to the model while IP and brand still only come from a person. He is building his own IP out of his domain knowledge now. AI helped with the code, but the idea and the story are his, and in this era that is the differentiator.

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