A boom in infrastructure projects linking Hong Kong to the surrounding Pearl River estuary is blurring the blurred border separating the former British colony from mainland China.
Beijing, which took over Hong Kong in 1997, sees the city – and especially the global financial services industry – as the linchpin of the Greater Bay Area, an 11-city megalopolis including China’s manufacturing heartland including Shenzhen, Macau and Zhuhai. The region’s collective gross domestic product is Rmb12.6tn ($1.97tn) in 2021, surpassing South Korea.
Projects such as the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, a 55km tunnel system and the world’s longest sea bridge, which opened in 2018, are just one of the many infrastructure projects linking Greater Bay Area cities. Others include railways, bridges, special economic zones and large real estate projects that open up vast economic opportunities for Hong Kong.
However, critics say the project is being carried out with what infrastructure Beijing has put in place along with legislation – gradually eroding Hong Kong’s autonomy. “It’s clear that they really want to dissolve the border,” said Ho-fung Hung, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and author City on the Edge: Hong Kong under Chinese Rule.
The city was returned to China in 1997 after 156 years of British rule, and is intended to be self-governing. But gradually Beijing has ended any semblance of the “one country, two systems” formula that had been agreed upon at the time of the handover. The culmination of this is a security law announced in mid-2020 that completely removes the sovereignty of special administrative regions.
Hung said economic and social integration between Hong Kong and the mainland began in 2003, when the Close Economic Partnership Agreement was signed by Hong Kong and Beijing.
Official plans to integrate the economies of the southern cities came in 2017, when Hong Kong signed a framework agreement to increase cooperation with the provinces of Macau and Guangdong.
The following year, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for further integration. “The integration of Hong Kong and Macau into the overall development of the country is the true meaning of ‘one country, two systems’,” he said.
Further integration was halted by the pandemic, as China’s zero-Covid lockdown closed its border with Hong Kong.
However, as China resumes travel without quarantine, a new wave of cross-border traffic will soon form as a recently completed infrastructure project unites the two jurisdictions.
“Economic integration should be accelerated, especially now that Covid is gone and the border gates between Hong Kong and China will be opened,” said Sonny Lo, a veteran political scientist and political observer of Hong Kong and Macau.
“In the long run, approaching 2047, we can not expect the territorial border for Hong Kong to remain unchanged,” said Lo, referring to the end of the 50-year agreement for the “one country, two systems” formula.
Hong Kong’s economic and political integration with the mainland continues apace. Little by little, the sovereignty of Hong Kong was destroyed.
After Beijing implemented the 2020 security law in Hong Kong, the state security agency set up an office to temporarily take over the Metropark Hotel Causeway Bay in July 2020.
The office, established by the Chinese government, is not subject to Hong Kong’s jurisdiction. Since then, more than 200 people have been arrested by national security officers for actions that the authorities consider secession, subversion, collusion with foreign forces and terrorism, which can lead to life in prison.
It is the latest addition to the ever-growing presence of China’s security services. The Hong Kong People’s Liberation Army garrison is headquartered in Central and owns 19 military sites, covering an area of approximately 27 square kilometers, according to the government.
In 2022, ahead of the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China, Major General Peng Jingtang vowed to be combat-ready for “difficult and complex” contingencies.
But the political stick comes with an economic carrot: policies such as the one recently announced by Guangdong province that will allow Hong Kong residents living in Hong Kong to commute and work in the Greater Bay Area. Combined with increasing infrastructure projects that will boost cross-border flows, Hong Kong’s economic uniqueness could quickly disappear.
This article is from Nikkei Asia, a global publication with a unique Asian perspective on politics, economics, business and international affairs. Our own reporters and external commentators from around the world share their views on Asia, while the Asia300 section provides in-depth coverage of the 300 largest and fastest-growing companies from 11 economies outside of Japan.
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“China has always had a regional, geoeconomic, geopolitical, and regional integration strategy,” political scientist Lo said. “Physical and territorial integration is inevitable. The question now is the problem of migration and population: how can you facilitate movement in the north?
Editors: Charles Clover, Alice French Design: Michael Tsang, Alice French Graphics: MinJung Kim, Hidechika Nishijima, Naomi Hakusui, Michael Tsang Copy editor: John Geis
Version of this article first published by Nikkei Asia on January 18, 2023. ©2023 Nikkei Inc. All rights reserved