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Greater Bay Area
OpinionLetters

LettersFor Hong Kong, Macau and other core Greater Bay Area cities, the devil will be in the details

  • Beijing has rosy and grandiose plans for the bay area scheme, but recognition across jurisdictions has to be hammered out

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An advertisement for the “Greater Bay Area” at Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay MTR station. The hope is that there will be as much focus on the integration of rules and regulations across the 11 cities involved, as there has been on promoting the idea. Photo: Fung Chang
Letters
The blueprint for the “Greater Bay Area” unveiled last week by the central government defines the roles of the four core cities of Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau and specifies the short-term and long-term goals. It accentuates cooperation and coordination between the cities. The blueprint also reassures us that the bay area development promises all four parties many benefits, alleviating concerns that Hong Kong might be reduced to a less significant role and lose its competitive advantages. The blueprint sends an uplifting message that the bay area plan is not a zero-sum game.

Nevertheless, cooperation is easier said than done, as there would definitely be some practical issues that come up in the process, or disagreements on certain matters that need to be mitigated.

For instance, when it comes to patent application or authentication for companies based in Hong Kong and ambitious to expand to the Chinese mainland – or vice versa – divisions could arise.

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Technology companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups, are encouraged to move northwards and seek opportunities in Guangdong province, where there’s a healthy welcoming entrepreneurial ecosystem with the Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Youth Innovation and Entrepreneur Hub and the Nanshan Science and Technology Park in Shenzhen.

The potential problem is, if a start-up which develops a product in the mainland’s incubation hub is successfully granted a patent there and wants to introduce the innovation to Hong Kong, its patent may not be recognised by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s system, meaning it would have to apply for another patent from scratch before putting the product on the local market.

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