Affluence down the line
About 300,000 Hakkas living in Hong Kong migrated from the poor and once inaccessible mountains around Heyuan in northern Guangdong. New roads, and especially the new Beijing-Kowloon railway, have now raised expectations that the exodus from places like Heyuan district will stop.
Heyuan is only 180 kilometres from Kowloon - and even remote border counties such as Longchuan are now only five hours away by train - but this remains a world apart. Centuries ago, the Hakka, or Kejia (as the Putonghua translates the term for 'guest people') came here seeking refuge and uninhabited lands. The Cantonese preferred to keep the rich Pearl River Delta for themselves and the Hakkas were allowed only to scratch a living in these inaccessible mountains.
Even now, as you travel along a newly-built highway, you can glimpse people still living in crude timber and mud huts, a sure sign of serious poverty.
Early hopes of an investment boom, with factories relocating from the delta to take advantage of cheap land and convenient transport links to Hong Kong, are fading.
Hong Kong and the delta together rank as probably the richest region in China, but this has not spurred much self-sustaining economic growth out here. In the recent past, officials estimated 63 per cent of the Cantonese lived in mountainous regions designated 'poverty areas'.
This is not to deny a trickle-down effect. Hong Kong's indirect influence has been immense and local officials expect it to grow after the handover. Take Longchuan, one of the five counties in Heyuan prefecture: out of its 800,000 population, 80,000 worked in Hong Kong-run factories in the delta plain. And their remittances, an average of 5,000 yuan (HK$4,665) a year, have brought a certain prosperity.
Local officials boast about the number of factories that relocated here, especially since 1992 when Beijing confirmed that the railway line would go through Heyuan. They say the economic boom sparked by the railway has sucked in thousands of workers from the rest of the country. One factory they showed visitors belongs to the Hong Kong Wah Gar group, which shifted first from Shenzhen, then to Dongguan and now to Heyuan, to make its American-style frozen yoghurt for export.
The past four years have seen the fastest growth Heyuan's history, with annual growth of 18.9 per cent. thanks to the railway.
Intense lobbying went on, officials said, especially in Anhui and Jiangxi provinces but also in Heyuan. Here the authorities were persuaded to open a station in the poor county of Heping just to help it along.
Yet an air of desperation still hangs over Heyuan. When the railway began operation last year, it was supposed to trigger an investment frenzy. Instead, as with so many other parts of the country, Heyuan is littered with half-finished buildings and empty construction lots. These were projects inspired by Deng Xiaoping's 1992 Tour of the South, but were abandoned two years ago after the austerity campaign cut off bank loans.
Not surprisingly, officials speak reverentially of Deng Xiaoping and keep quiet about their feelings for Li Peng or Zhu Rongji, who have ruthlessly enforced the economic slowdown. Their policies have had a knock-on effect all the way down the line.
The railway is supposed to bring closer ties to Hong Kong but instead local government is lobbying hard for big government-financed projects - a pig farm that would be Asia's biggest, fresh investment in the local iron-ore plant, perhaps a pipeline bringing fresh water to Hong Kong.
Yet Heyuan has to worry not only about Beijing's whims but about how successful the handover will be. A collapse in Hong Kong business confidence could be crippling. People's hopes of escaping poverty are now tied to Hong Kong's future. As one local official put it, 'If things go badly in Hong Kong, Heyuan will suffer too'.
The region already functions as part of Hong Kong's commercial empire. So far, Hong Kong-based companies have invested US$300 million (HK$2.32 billion) there. In Longchuan alone, six factories from Dongguan have relocated in the past two years. The chief attraction is that wages are one-tenth what they are in Hong Kong.
If Hong Kong can keep up the pace of industrial growth under Chinese rule, Heyuan's three million people plan on inheriting the low-tech labour-intensive jobs the new tracks will bring Heyuan's way. If they do not, the Beijing-Kowloon railway may serve as a conduit for a fresh migration southwards towards Hong Kong, that once-distant beacon of golden opportunity.
