The Hong Kong government plans to step up its involvement in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) scheme, with Carrie Lam recently declaring that the GBA will be a key part of its post-Covid-19 economic recovery focus. However, there is still some debate regarding how Hong Kong should position itself within the scheme.

And with Shenzhen, which has become a pilot zone for “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, granted special supportive regulations recently by China’s central government, Hong Kong’s leading position among the GBA cities seems to be on the wane.

"There is not much head-on competition between Hong Kong and Shenzhen," says Perry Wong, managing director for China at the Milken Institute, an economic thinktank. The institute recently issued the latest edition of its annual Best-Performing Cities China report, in which Shenzhen ranked second among the 264 top mainland Chinese cities surveyed, the second consecutive year it has done so. (Lanzhou, the capital of China’s Gansu province and a crucial link in China’s One Belt, One Road initiative, took the number one spot.)

But Wong doesn’t think Shenzhen’s prominence will threaten Hong Kong’s role. "Hong Kong and Shenzhen, as well as Guangzhou, are not competing in the same dimension," says the experienced economist who specializes in analyzing regional economic development in greater China and other parts of Asia. "The GBA will have limited impact on Hong Kong in the upcoming two to three years. But as bonds with the other cities in the GBA become stronger, the impact will become more prominent – probably in three to five years."

However, given the current geopolitical issues and the uncertainty brought by the Covid-19 pandemic, people are wondering if Hong Kong will truly connect with the rest of the GBA.

"It does not make sense if Hong Kong does not connect with the GBA," Wong asserts. "The economic bond between Hong Kong and Guangdong’s cities, such as Guangzhou and Foshan, has been there for more than 100 years, though it was cut off temporarily during 1949 to 1978. But how Hong Kong integrates with the region is subject to how the regulators on both sides connect the two economies on a mutually beneficial basis."

Hong Kong, he suggests, should focus more on aspects like how the scheme can relieve pressures related to the area’s lack of space and it should not restrict its coordination to GBA cities. " The Pearl River Delta provides good opportunities, but Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore and Malaysia can all be its partners."