HONG KONG - As central planners dream of further integrating the former
Western-run territories of Hong Kong and Macau into China's rich Pearl River
Delta region, relatively sleepy Hengqin island has been given a big wake-up
call.
The largely undeveloped island, until now a piece of Guangdong province under
the jurisdiction of the city of Zhuhai, bordering Macau, is slated for a major
makeover as a resort paradise, featuring golf courses, theme parks, water
sports, hiking trails and other tourist attractions.
Hengqin is three times the size of Macau, Asia's gambling capital and its
immediate neighbor to the east, and development of the island could add
significantly to tourist attractions in the region. The potential of developing
Hengqin has long been recognized. Three years ago, Las Vegas Sands, which has
casino interests in
Macau, described plans to invest US$1 billion in a resort complex on the
island. In the event, gambling is ruled out in the development plan approved by
the State Council in late August.
Under the most recent proposals, development of more than half of the island's
landmass of 106.46 square kilometers will be prohibited, making it a rare
eco-friendly patch of China.
But tourism is only part of the Hengqin story.
While the development plan envisages a family-oriented leisure and resort
center for the southern part of the island - a perfect complement to nearby
Macau's high-stakes, hard-edged gambling and adult entertainment - a
first-class science and technology zone is planned in the north, and the
University of Macau is building a new 1.2 billion patacas (more than US$150.3
million) campus, scheduled for completion in 2012, in the east.
Official projections show Hengqin's current population of 4,000 growing to
200,000 by 2020 and per capita gross domestic product, now the equivalent of
about US$1,200, increasing to more than $29,000 by that time.
Those are the kinds of figures that make potential investors interested, and
200 of them gathered last week at Hong Kong's Island Shangri-La Hotel to listen
to Chinese officials wax strong about their vision of another kind of
Shangri-la that they hope to build on Hengqin.
The ambitious plan for the island, outlined in official communiques last
summer, was laid out in greater detail for the well-heeled audience in Hong
Kong. The fact that a high-ranking official for the National Development and
Reform Commission, Fan Hengshan, was on hand to make his own personal pitch for
the project lent it additional weight.
"This is a new creative model to bring out the best features of Guangdong, Hong
Kong and Macau," Fan said. "It will be an experiment with new policies. We need
the support of Hong Kong and Macau to succeed."
Fan was referring to hurdles to the plan thrown up by the tricky legal
relationship between Beijing and the two former colonies, obstacles that will
require imagination and a willingness to experiment to surmount.
Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1997 after more than 150 years of British
rule, and Macau, formally colonized by Portugal in 1887 after serving as a
Portuguese trading post for the previous 330 years, returned to the motherland
two years later. Under the "one country two systems" formula designed by Deng
Xiaoping, both have their own constitutions guaranteeing legal autonomy and
maintain strict border controls with the mainland.
Shortly after Hong Kong's handover, then Chinese president Jiang Zemin used a
metaphor to explain the "one country two systems", saying "the well water does
not intrude into river water, and vice versa" (each side minds its own
business). However, one decade or so after the handover, Hong Kong and Macau
have become increasingly integrated economically with the mainland,
particularly the Pearl River Delta.
But it seems when economic integration develops to a certain extent, some kind
of physical (geographical) integration becomes inevitable, at least for the
sake of the sustained development of Hong Kong and Macau. In this regard, the
Hengqin project may be seen as a test case that Beijing is opening the gate to
allow "well water" to intrude into "river water". Nowadays, both in Hong Kong
and on the mainland, there is no lack of talk about a merger of Hong Kong with
Shenzhen, its mainland neighbor, to form a mega-metropolis. Thus the
much-vaunted autonomy of Hong Kong and Macau may be ripe for some creative
reinterpretation.
Such a mindset is already on display in the new infrastructure planned for the
island, which until now has been occupied by the military and a smattering of
farmers and fisherman. For example, the Macau government has agreed to build a
tunnel from its Coloane Island to Hengqin through which students, faculty and
other employees of the new campus will commute without being required to pass
through immigration. The tunnel will also carry a communications cable giving
the new campus the same high-speed Internet connection enjoyed in Macau.
Taking the "one country, two systems" mantra that has governed the handover of
China's former colonies a step further, Macau law will apply on the new campus
while mainland law will prevail in the rest of Hengqin.
Officials are also reportedly considering granting visa-free access to Hengqin
to residents of Macau and Hong Kong and to foreigners. Such an innovation, if
it were actually implemented, would represent leaps-and-bounds progress in the
thinking of mainland officialdom. This kind of openness to foreigners has long
been a staple of life in Hong Kong and Macau but, despite the last 30 years of
economic liberalization in China, a lingering fear of foreign influence remains
among Communist Party officials who ultimately make the decisions there.
Hengqin will serve as a test for them, and the possible economic rewards may in
the end trump their paranoia.
Meanwhile, Hengqin will become the third so-called "New Area" in China, after
Pudong in Shanghai and Binhai in Tianjin. These special development zones are
all designated for economic experimentation and reform. But the Hengqin plan's
emphasis on a clean environment and eco-tourism, as well as its easy
transportation links with Macau and Hong Kong, mark it as something distinctly
new. If successful, it will signal yet another important economic advance for
China.
At the same time, the Henqin project could bring Hong Kong and Macau still
closer to the bosom of the motherland and further enhance their integration
into the Pearl River Delta economy.
It is no secret that officials in Hong Kong and Macau are worried about being
marginalized as oddball former colonies as the mainland continues its
spectacular growth.
Macau has done its best to attract mainland gamblers, and the
leisure-and-resort plan for Hengqin should serve to lure many more visitors,
both Chinese and foreign, to its casinos. Hong Kong, a shopping and
entertainment mecca which opened its own Disneyland in 2005, also stands to
benefit from a new influx of tourists.
Moreover, Hong Kong and Macau are reaching out to the riches of the mainland
with plans to build a bridge - at 29 kilometers (18 miles) one of the world's
longest - linking Hong Kong, Macau and Zuhai. And Hong Kong is committed to
building a high-speed railway to connect the city to the mainland's rail
network in Guangdong. At a cost of HK$65.2 billion (US$8.4 billion), it would
be, per kilometer, the most expensive stretch of railway built anywhere in the
world.
Local critics have decried the exorbitant cost of the project, but city
officials insist it is necessary for Hong Kong's future prosperity.
In another jaw-dropping proposal, the Bauhinia Foundation, a policy think-tank
closely associated with the Hong Kong government, has even proposed the merger
of Hong Kong and the mainland border city of Shenzhen, a special economic zone,
to form a mega-city of 20 million people. This idea however is not original.
Several years ago, when development in Shenzhen came to its bottleneck, a
number of Shenzhen scholars and legislators already began to push for it.
There is no shortage of imagination here on how to make full use of "one
country two systems".
Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached at
kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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