Hong Kong  - The new British minister for business and enterprise plans to visit Hong Kong and the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen from Wednesday to Friday, officials announced Tuesday.

Hutton, appointed the first Secretary of State for the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reforms by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2007, will meet Hong Kong's Financial Secretary John Tsang as part of his visit.

He will also hold talks with expatriate business people working in Hong Kong and speak at a British Chamber of Commerce meeting, the British Consulate-General's office announced.

Among the issues expected to be raised during the talks are the new visa restrictions on expatriate business people travelling from Hong Kong to mainland China imposed in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.

Expatriates based in Hong Kong complain they been unable since March to get multiple-entry visa to China from the former British colony and have to repeatedly apply for single and double entry visas to cross the border.

Hong Kong, a British colony for 156 years before it reverted to Chinese rule in 1997, is home to around 25,000 British expatriates, many of them with business interests in southern China.

Hutton will visit the Chinese border city of Shenzhen on Thursday and meet the city's mayor to discuss plans for further collaboration between UK and mainland enterprises, the consulate-general's office said. (dpa)