HKSAR chief starts first official visit to Greater Bay Area in post-pandemic era, aiming to accelerate integration

Leading a delegation, John Lee ka-chiu, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government, began his first official visit to the Greater Bay Area (GBA) on Thursday, aiming to accelerate the SAR's integration into the country's overall development plan and to facilitate cooperation in talent exchange, innovation and finance. 

"Just arrived in Guangzhou," Lee said in a social media post on Thursday morning after he and several HKSAR government officials arrived at a high-speed railway station at the capital city of South China's Guangdong Province. He said he always expected to visit neighboring cities to Hong Kong in the GBA after the cross-border travel fully resumed, and those cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen have been playing a crucial role in helping the HKSAR fighting the COVID epidemic and getting back to the normalcy. 

Cross-border travel between the HKSAR and the Chinese mainland fully resumed as of February 6, which was hailed as a significant move in boosting Hong Kong's post-pandemic recovery and accelerating the city's integration into the Greater Bay Area plan, especially after the unprecedented social turmoil in 2019 and three-year pandemic since the early 2020 have slowed down this plan, observers said. 

With the central government fully supporting Hong Kong in maintaining its distinctive status and advantages, to seize the historic opportunities offered by the country's development, and to actively dovetail itself with the National 14th Five-Year Plan and other national strategies such as the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Lee said the HKSAR government has set a supervision group overseeing the city's integration plan to strengthen top-level coordination and actively promote high-quality development in various fields in the bay area. 

The delegation includes officials like Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Tsang Kwok-wai, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Yau Ying-wah, Secretary for Education Choi Yuk-lin. 

The HKSAR delegation will take advantage of this trip to actively promote the facilitation of two-way talent flow in the GBA, innovation and technology cooperation, financial service cooperation, and cooperation projects between Hong Kong universities and colleges in mainland cities in the GBA, Lee said. 

On Wednesday, Lee met Shenzhen Mayor Qin Weizhong in Hong Kong, saying that Hong Kong welcomes high-quality enterprises to continue to issue offshore renminbi bonds in Hong Kong, and hopes that the two places will continue to strengthen cooperation in the field of financial services.