Opinion | Greater Bay Area’s success as a tech hub depends on timely integration to motivate young people

The plan to link nine cities in Guangdong province with the Hong Kong and Macau special administrative regions to form a Greater Bay Area is an ambitious one. The intention is to create an economic powerhouse on a scale to match San Francisco and Tokyo, with technological development at its core.

Already, some professional firms have highlighted potential problems in terms of matching the different economies with their distinctive cultures, political sensitivities and legal systems. In the latter area alone, there are three widely varying practices: common law in Hong Kong and Portuguese law in Macau are both very different from the mainland system, and from each other. Which should govern commercial contracts? How would contract disputes be settled and intellectual property rights protected?

Whether the plan succeeds will, to a large extent, depend on the attitude of young people on both sides of the borders. The physical infrastructure and legal and other issues can be tackled by older hands, but the imagination and creativity necessary to develop cutting edge technology is mainly a young person’s game. In this context, it was discouraging to see that a majority of young Hongkongers surveyed recently had little or no interest in exploring opportunities to the north.