Hong Kong-southern China Greater Bay Area ‘to rival New York, Tokyo’
Governor of Guangdong province says cooperation needed on wide range of issues to forge stronger ties between Hong Kong, Macau and the mainland
A government plan to deepen integration between Hong Kong and the mainland is designed to create a region as competitive as other bay areas such as “Los Angeles, New York and Tokyo”, according to Guangdong’s governor.
Ma Xingrui gave his assessment of the Greater Bay Area plan while meeting the provincial delegation at the National People’s Congress session in Beijing on Monday.
The plan was first proposed in a joint study by authorities in the region in 2011, but some Hong Kong lawmakers complaining they were not consulted. The idea got a renewed push when Premier Li Keqiang said in his annual government work report on Sunday that the mainland would draw up a plan for the “development of a city cluster in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area”.
The area in Tokyo covers 9,076 sq km and is home to 31 million people, while the San Francisco Bay Area covers 18,000 sq km and has a population of 7.6 million.
Ma said the blueprint called for broad cooperation on a range of social and economic policies, covering environmental and transport issues. He said the Guangdong government had asked the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, a think tank, to study the initiative.
