Congrats to the chamber for another worthwhile day at a Jockey Club box overlooking the iconic Happy Valley race course!
HK CEO John Lee set the picture – HK’s first Five Year Plan has just been issued to synchronise with China’s 15th out to 2030.
Up front and central is the enormous Northern Metropolis project which is set to eventually cover 300 square km (a third of HK’s land area) and house 2.5 million people (also a third of the current population) along the border with Shenzhen. We can expect greater high tech R & D (three universities will be added to the five already in Asia’s top ten); closer collaboration with over the border in Shenzhen; and that border to some extent being “dissolved” adding substance to the concept of the Greater Bay Area (some 88 million people stretching into Macau and much of Guangdong province) which is still split by differing constitutions, legal systems, currencies and more.
The project is well underway. CLP and the MTR have, of course, led the way. The first of several data centres will be at Sandy Ridge near Lo Wu. HSBC is to establish its global AI hub there with HKUST as anchor academic partner.
This is still ambitious stuff, though! Where will all those people come from and why (over the border, Kowloon, overseas)? Where will the money come from (the HKSAR government, its Government Related Entities such as the MTR, the private sector starting with utilities such as CLP)? And what incentives – if any – other than cheap land, should the government be offering the private sector businesses such as real estate developers and people to make the move before there are any customers? In this respect, the transport links back to Kowloon and across the New Territories will be crucial.
I once advised a government in India on how it could offer support to the private sector so as to encourage it to share the capex burden before a market had been fully established – and how to ration and recycle this support (for a new state capital city which didn’t in the end happen) and have expressed caution on Indonesia’s Nusantara but if anyone can do it, Hong Kong can and it was clear that the business community (including Logie Group) is keen to play its part, not least the ICAEW – see right.
