Coronavirus: talks with Guangdong on resuming cross-border travel must start from scratch, Hong Kong leader admits

Provincial authorities have not made any promises to city over scheme to restart travel, Carrie Lam tells lawmakers

Hong Kong will need to significantly raise its vaccination rate to put the government in a strong position for talks, she warns

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Travellers depart Hong Kong for mainland China at the Shenzhen Bay border crossing in December last year. Photo: Felix Wong

Published: 6:46pm, 15 Jul 2021Updated: 11:11pm, 15 Jul 2021

Guangdong provincial authorities have not made any promises to Hong Kong about quarantine-free travel across the border and any talks must start from scratch, the city’s leader has revealed.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor also said on Thursday the vaccination rate against Covid-19, currently around 36 per cent for people who had taken their first shot, would have to rise to about 70 per cent to put her administration in a better position to negotiate the scheme with her counterparts in mainland China.

In November last year, Hong Kong officials planned for the adoption of a quota system under which travellers with important business could cross the border, but the scheme was derailed by the fourth wave of the pandemic.

Lam said she brought up the topic of resuming cross-border travel whenever she met officials from the central government or Guangdong.

“Guangdong province has not promised anything on reopening the city’s borders with the mainland,” she told lawmakers in the Legislative Council. “When a previous plan we negotiated cannot be pushed forward, then it’s gone. Now we have to start the discussion again.”

Any negotiations would require the participation of not just Hong Kong and Guangdong authorities but also the central government, she noted.

While Hong Kong has largely tamed the pandemic by tightly controlling who can enter the city, that same success has in part undermined the government’s campaign to vaccinate the population. With nearly all of the roughly 30 cases recorded this month coming from overseas, some residents do not feel an urgent need to get inoculated.