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The HK AI Stack

The HK Developer's AI Toolkit: What Actually Works Without a VPN

Hong Kong AI Podcast/2026-03-07/10 min read/Developer ToolsDeepSeekQwenCursorOpenCodeHong Kong

You're a developer in Hong Kong. You want to use AI in your workflow. ChatGPT is blocked. Claude is blocked. Gemini API returns "User location is not supported." Now what?

Turns out: quite a lot. The HK developer AI toolkit in 2026 is surprisingly strong — arguably more interesting than what's available if you just default to OpenAI. Here's what actually works, no VPN required.

LLM APIs — The Foundation

DeepSeek API

DeepSeek made waves for its reasoning and chat capabilities, and its MIT license makes it the go-to for self-hosting. No geographic restrictions.

What you get: DeepSeek-V3.2 (671B MoE, 37B active parameters), DeepSeek-R1 (reasoning), and the full model family. MIT licensed — you can self-host everything.

API access: api.deepseek.com. OpenAI-compatible API format. Pricing is a fraction of GPT-4 — V3 at $0.14/M input tokens, R1 at $0.55/M.

Note: For coding tasks specifically, DeepSeek isn't the strongest option — models like MiniMax M2.5, GLM-5, and Kimi K2.5 score higher on coding benchmarks. DeepSeek's strengths are reasoning/chat, price, and self-hosting.

Self-hosting: Run via Ollama (easiest), vLLM (production), or llama.cpp. Smaller models like DeepSeek-Coder run on consumer GPUs. Full V3.2 needs serious hardware or cloud instances.

Alibaba Qwen API

Strong alternative, especially for bilingual English/Chinese work.

What you get: Qwen 3.5 (up to 397B MoE), supports 201 languages, Apache 2.0 license. Particularly good at Chinese language tasks — which matters when you're building for the HK market.

API access: Via Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, or self-host from Hugging Face/ModelScope. Also available at chat.qwen.ai for conversational use.

Baidu ERNIE API

Less commonly used by HK devs but worth knowing.

What you get: ERNIE 4.5 (fully open source, Apache 2.0, up to 424B MoE with multimodal support). ERNIE 5.0 (2.4T params) is in preview.

API access: Via Baidu's Qianfan platform. Open-source weights on Hugging Face.

Coding Assistants

Cursor

A leading AI coding IDE among Hong Kong developers. Cursor works without a VPN and supports multiple model backends.

Why it works in HK: Cursor's Auto mode routes between built-in models intelligently. No manual API setup needed — just install and go.

Setup: Download from cursor.com. Pro plan ($20/month) gives you Auto mode and fast requests. Power users can also add custom model providers (Qwen, etc.) in Settings > Models.

Cost: Free tier available. Pro is $20/month with more requests.

OpenCode CLI

If you prefer the terminal, OpenCode (opencode.ai) is an open-source coding CLI. Think Claude Code or GitHub Copilot CLI, but works with any model.

Why it works in HK: It's open source and connects to any OpenAI-compatible API. As of March 2026, offers MiniMax M2.5 for free — a top-tier coding model. Zero geographic restrictions.

Setup: Install via npm or homebrew. Works out of the box with the free model, or configure your own API provider.

GitHub Copilot

Still works in HK through GitHub. Uses OpenAI models under the hood but GitHub's enterprise licensing means no geographic blocks.

Cost: $10/month for individuals, $19/month for business.

Chat & General Use

Microsoft Copilot

The most "official" path to GPT-4 in Hong Kong. Available through Microsoft 365, Bing Chat, and the Copilot app. No VPN needed.

Best for: Enterprise environments, especially finance and legal where compliance matters. IT departments can point to Microsoft's enterprise agreements.

Poe by Quora

Aggregator that provides access to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and more from Hong Kong. Not an API replacement, but useful for conversational use and comparing models.

Cost: Free tier with limited messages. $20/month for unlimited.

Native Chinese Chat Apps

Doubao (ByteDance), Kimi (Moonshot AI), and chat.qwen.ai all work natively in HK. If you're comfortable with Chinese-language interfaces, these are powerful options.

The Self-Hosting Path

For teams that want full control — no API dependency, no geographic concerns, no data leaving your infrastructure:

[Ollama](https://ollama.com/) — Easiest way to run models locally. One-line install, pull models by name. Good for development and testing. (GitHub)

vLLM — Production-grade serving. Better throughput, supports batching, OpenAI-compatible API out of the box.

llama.cpp — Runs on CPUs and consumer GPUs. Good for laptops and edge devices.

What to run: DeepSeek-Coder-V2 for coding tasks. Qwen2.5 7B/14B for general use on consumer hardware. For full frontier models, you'll need cloud GPUs (Lambda Labs, vast.ai, or Alibaba Cloud ECS with GPU instances).

The Emerging Stack

A practical HK dev team stack looks something like this:

  • -IDE: Cursor with Auto mode (or manually configured models)
  • -Terminal: OpenCode CLI (as of March 2026, offers MiniMax M2.5 free)
  • -Chat: Poe or chat.qwen.ai for quick questions
  • -API: DeepSeek or Qwen API for production applications
  • -Enterprise: Microsoft Copilot for compliance-sensitive work
  • -Self-hosted: Ollama for local development, vLLM for production

The irony: being cut off from US AI tools is pushing HK developers to become highly fluent in open-source AI. When you can't rely on a single provider's API, you learn to run your own infrastructure. That's a skill that's going to matter more and more.

Sources

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