Foundation’s report provides digital way ahead for the Greater Bay Area
- The 2022 Foundation report contains 50 recommendations, including economic reform, cooperation, development and job creation
- It could repay study by our government before it comes up with concrete measures to push ahead
There is no time to be lost for serious talks between Hong Kong, Macau and the nine mainland regional cities that together comprise the GBA, to formulate concrete plans to advance the concept. The first effort by local business leaders to flesh out the vision, organised by the 2022 Foundation, a think tank sponsored by Victor Fung Kwok-king of the Fung Group, is welcome. The foundation commissioned a study by economists from Hong Kong, Guangdong and Europe which envisioned the GBA as a digital project, in which Hong Kong would become a big-data hub of business cooperation.
The comparison with the mainland’s opening up 40 years ago, driven by labour-intensive industry, is evidence of the pace of change and the need to stay abreast of it. The report envisages linking the 11 GBA cities with business-to-business commercial data. But the sharing of business data involves regulatory obstacles in China. In that regard the World Trade Organisation Agreement on Trade Facilitation (ATF), a multilateral mechanism for speeding up the movement and clearance of goods across different jurisdictions, provides a framework for cooperation that accommodates differences, such as the “one country, two systems” principle.