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Opinion | The Greater Bay Area is not some insidious plot to integrate Hong Kong but a plan to change people’s lives for the better
- The idea is to lower barriers that create inefficiencies in business and everyday lives across the region. But not all barriers: there is unlikely to be a free flow of capital, so as to keep Hong Kong’s special status as a free market
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The Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area came out three weeks ago. As officials have stressed, the plan sets the broad direction of the initiative, instead of listing hundreds of details. Even so, there has been a lot of speculation and discussion, and things are probably being exaggerated one way or another.
The basic idea is simple: the Pearl River Delta can become one of the world’s leading megacities if the various jurisdictions cooperate more in areas like planning.
The region is already a global powerhouse. It became one in the 1990s, as Shenzhen and Dongguan evolved into sprawling manufacturing zones, with Hong Kong as the front office. Shenzhen is now a major tech hub, and Hong Kong has grown as a financial centre. The other cities – like Macau, Guangzhou and Foshan – have also flourished.
Yet there are still considerable physical, regulatory and other barriers that create inefficiencies among the jurisdictions, and there are local government rivalries. How much more prosperous would the region be if it could overcome some of the problems – without undermining the different cities’ different strengths?
Some critics suspect the plan is intended to absorb Hong Kong into the mainland, or bring it under a socialist central-planning system.
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