Adding commercial developments in border areas will provide grass-roots job opportunities and allow lower shop rents for business start-ups, executive councillor Cheung Chi-kong said on Monday.
Cheung was speaking about the development concept raised by the One Country Two Systems Research Institute two years ago in response to controversy over planning for 2,400 hectares of border land and three nearby new towns.
The institute, of which Cheung is executive director, proposed adding commercial developments in border areas and allowing mainlanders to enter on a visa-on-arrival basis. He said this had recently ‘“misinterpreted” by some local media as a visa-free arrangement.
While saying the city’s might lose its independence to the mainland, the Apple Daily also accused the government of shaping the three new towns – being planned in the Northeast New Territories – as a new economic centre for mainlanders instead of using them to solve Hongkongers’ housing problems.
Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor rejected this view last Thursday, saying the towns “are being planned for Hong Kong’s public interest”.
On a Commercial Radio programme on Monday morning Cheung said the visa-on-arrival basis was proposed only for commercial developments inside the existing border which would cover just a few square kilometres.