Paul Yeung
The Lok Ma Chau project will be a stepping stone for Hong Kong to promote innovation and technology development in Hong Kong. According to the agreement, Hong Kong and Shenzhen will jointly develop an innovation and technology park at the Lok Ma Chau Loop. The 87-hectare park, a site four times bigger than the existing Hong Kong Science Park, will be the largest innovation and technology platform ever set up in Hong Kong. The new science park, a product of Hong Kong-mainland cooperation based on the “one country, two systems” principle, is expected to attract top technological enterprises, research institutions and higher education institutes from Hong Kong, the mainland and overseas.
The Greater Bay Area, or GBA, will act as a new and high-profile strategic platform for Hong Kong’s economic development. In his annual Government Work Report, Li said central authorities would promote the GBA concept. This suggests the plan had been elevated to a national strategic level.
Hong Kong now faces competition from both overseas rivals such as Singapore and Chinese mainland cities such as Shenzhen. The plan, by clustering Hong Kong and other major cities in the region together and creating significant synergy, will help turn these cities into partners, not competitors. Moreover, with Hong Kong’s participation the GBA can be more competitive against other city clusters in future. According to research, aggregate GDPs of all the partner cities in the GBA in 2015 reached as much as $1.4 trillion, which is double of that of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Moreover, the GBA will give Hong Kong more space to cope with its land shortage problem. Since it is much harder to produce new land resources in Hong Kong now than before, GBA development may help the city mitigate the land shortage problem to a certain extent by diverting some demand for space to neighboring regions.
Does 2017 really mark a turning point for Hong Kong’s economy? It depends on whether Hong Kong can act proactively to grasp opportunities and adopt necessary policies in 2018. For instance, the talent policy is crucial to the success of the Lok Ma Chau project. To enhance cooperation among skilled people from different regions, Hong Kong needs to set up a convenient entry-and-exit system for mainland talents to work in the science park. For the GBA development, whether Hong Kong can make full use of its advantages depends on the ability to achieve a free flow of factors of production in the GBA. Hence finding ways to break existing barriers is the priority in the coming year.
The Lok Ma Chau science park and GBA are not only development projects but also significant examples for future Hong Kongmainland cooperation under “one country, two systems”. Mother Teresa, the Nobel peace prize winner, taught us: “I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.” This is the best wish for Hong Kong.