It is seven o'clock in the morning at the Lowu border post and the migrant workers are pouring through. Mostly labourers working in the North New Territories, they are Hong Kong residents who have moved to Shenzhen in search of lower living costs.
Often they bring their children, who must cross the border every day to go to school in Hong Kong, with them. With one foot in mainland China, one foot in Hong Kong, are they the face of the future? Will the border with Shenzhen follow many other borders worldwide that have fallen - or at least become almost invisible - in this era of globalisation? On the first morning of the Special Administrative Region, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa promised that 'Hong Kong and the motherland will move forward together, hand in hand.' But the reality at the start of the new millennium is that today, the Hong Kong Government has still not indicated its choice: whether the SAR will continue as a self-contained region, or whether it will integrate with neighbouring areas.
Professor Victor Sit Fung-shuen, who has been studying the Pearl River Delta at the University of Hong Kong for two decades, says this is a key question for Hong Kong's future.
Professor Sit, a National People's Congress deputy and an adviser to the Shenzhen authorities, says that with the exception of Mr Tung most officials are still treating Hong Kong as an island.
'We need a change of mentality,' he says.
The increased competition for Hong Kong's middleman role as a result of the mainland's entry to the World Trade Organisation means 'we need to deepen our economic relationship with the rest of the Pearl River Delta Area'.
The Delta has land and labour, and many skills that Hong Kong lacks. With a land area of 40,000 square kilometres, in the next millennium it could do much to relieve pressure on the 1,097 square kilometres of Hong Kong.