City Beat | Angela Merkel visited innovative Shenzhen on her China trip. Will she stop in Hong Kong next time?
While Hong Kong slipped into second place in global competitiveness, the German chancellor’s visit reflected its neighbour’s rise from backward border town to hi-tech hub
“International face” is a popular term mainland Chinese netizens use to describe their globally famous film stars, such as Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi and others.
But when it is used to describe a city, it can mean something different, especially when that city is Hong Kong.
Not many in Hong Kong seemed to pay much attention last week to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s whirlwind two-day visit to China, even when she picked our neighbour, Shenzhen, as her last stop.
Merkel officiated at the opening ceremony for an innovation centre hosted by the German Chamber of Commerce, and visited a local start-up after meeting President Xi Jinping in Beijing, where the two leaders touched on a number of world issues against the backdrop of China-US trade friction. They included a possible collapse of the Iran nuclear deal after Washington decided to pull out, and all the uncertainties concerning the Korean peninsula.
Regardless of their differences on China’s human rights situation, a more practical issue for both Merkel and Xi was how to gain bigger access into each other’s markets, as the two agreed on more technology cooperation projects, including those involving driverless cars and artificial intelligence.
Merkel’s Shenzhen visit was a clear reflection of both sides’ common goal, with this once-backward border town having transformed into China’s major hi-tech hub, housing quite a few German companies.