Hong Kong lawmakers begin 5-day Fujian trip with aim to deepen ties with mainland Chinese province
- Delegation of 34 lawmakers begin trip with tour of several technology and data management companies in Fuzhou New District
- Legislative Council president Andrew Leung confirms cancellation of trip to Beijing, originally slated for September
A delegation of Hong Kong lawmakers embarked on a five-day visit to Fujian on Saturday, with their leader saying they hoped fostering deeper ties with the southern mainland Chinese province would help inform policy decisions in the future.
Andrew Leung Kwan-yuen, president of the Legislative Council, also confirmed that the legislature’s trip to Beijing, which was originally slated for September, had been cancelled, as they could not arrange a time that worked for both sides. He added that he did not know whether the trip had been rescheduled.
Speaking at the Hong Kong International Airport ahead of his departure, Leung said the delegation of 34 lawmakers would explore ways to deepen the city’s cooperation with Fujian province as its largest external investor.
“We look forward to bringing our first-hand observations and information back to the legislature, using different forms of exchanges in our chambers to reflect our thoughts to the government, fostering deeper ties between Hong Kong and Fujian while hastening the city’s integration into national development plans,” Leung said.
Stressing a people-centric approach, Leung said the group would also meet students, retirees and retailers from Hong Kong to understand their lives in the province.
They will visit Huaqiao University’s Xiamen campus to meet Hong Kong students, as well as a home for the elderly in Fuzhou to see retirees from the city with Fujian heritage.
Lawmakers began their trip with a tour of several technology and data management companies in the Fuzhou New District, a development area established in 2015 by the Chinese State Council.
They also learned about authorities’ plans for Binhai New City, a development hub in the coastal area of Fuzhou, as well as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s involvement in the scheme during his tenure as the Communist Party municipal secretary from 1990 to 1996.
Plans for Binhai New City were approved in 2017 and it was designed to be a key industry and transport hub, as well as a model for sustainable development with its beaches and mangroves.
The delegation also visited the Digital Cloud Computing Data Centre and nylon production company Highsun Holding Group in the Fuzhou New District, where they learned about the development of the data industry in the region and its manufacturing history.
Commercial sector lawmaker Erik Yim Kong, who is from Fuzhou, said Hong Kong’s Northern Metropolis scheme could reference Binhai new city, especially in transport, logistics and technology.
The Northern Metropolis scheme is a government development project to create an innovation technology-led commercial and residential hub, with up to 186,000 homes near the border with the mainland.
“Under a digital economy, there are cross-border data centres. Could the scheme take cues from Fujian to develop a large-scale data centre for information exchange in the future?” Yim said.
Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry Sun Dong earlier in July said local and mainland authorities would develop a plan within months for cross-border data transfers in the Greater Bay Area, a scheme to turn Hong Kong, Macau and nine neighbouring cities into an economic powerhouse.
The data deal will cover banking and healthcare information focusing on transfers from the mainland to Hong Kong.
Echoing Yim’s suggestion, Election Committee lawmaker Michael Lee Chun-keung said Hong Kong could learn from Fujian when it came to data exchange.
“We need to play catch up. When it comes to the establishment of data centres, we are far behind the mainland, but the most important thing is to learn how to compensate for each other’s strengths and weaknesses,” Lee said.
The delegation also meet Fuzhou New District authorities and the Fujian-Hong Kong Cooperation Consultative Committee, an organisation established by former chief executive Leung Chun-ying, now vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the nation’s top advisory body.
During the five-day trip, the lawmakers will visit companies in the technology and biomedicine sectors, as well as heritage sites in Fuzhou and Xiamen. They will also meet municipal officials in the cities.
The trip marks the second time that lawmakers from the city are visiting the mainland since borders reopened last year. In April, 83 legislators took part in a four-day trip to the bay area with Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu and Chief Secretary Eric Chan Kwok-ki.
