'Combination Of HK And GBA Is A Win-win Situation'

Chief Executive John Lee on Sunday said Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area can cooperate and create a win-win situation.

“Hong Kong has several advantages: we are a very international city so we attract money, we attract investment, we attract talents from all over the world,” he said.

“And of course the nine mainland cities of the GBA, they are very good at manufacturing. They have very complete production lines…we add together the different strengths of different cities that build a great GBA for the benefit of everybody.”

Lee made the comments on the third day of a Greater Bay Area visit in which he and a delegation of officials and lawmakers toured the cities of Dongguan and Foshan.

The CE visited an air cargo logistics hub in Dongguan in the morning to inspect a project that allows mainland cargo to be screened in the city so that it could be shipped via the SAR to other parts of the world without the hassle of further checks.

Lee said in a Facebook post that this model enhances the SAR's connector role as an air transportation hub.

The group also visited Huawei’s Ox Horn campus in Dongguan, and boarded an electric tram that runs through the campus.

After the tour, Roundtable lawmaker Michael Tien quoted Huawei officials as saying that the tech giant is interested in investing in the SAR's Northern Metropolis.

“[Huawei] believes that Hong Kong is a place with great advantages in digital and big data calculation because our power supply is stable,” he said.

“It is possible that future investments [by Huawei] in the Northern Metropolis may extend to this area, so we should leverage our advantages in Hong Kong,” Tien added.

In Foshan, the chief executive toured a centre – dubbed the “Foshan City Brain” – which uses information technology to enhance the city’s safety and emergency coordination.

Chief Secretary Eric Chan and another group of lawmakers also visited a robotics company in Foshan.

The company focuses on the research and development, production and application of construction robots and digital building information models.

They visited the company's robot restaurant to observe the automated machines making snacks and coffee.

IT sector lawmaker Duncan Chiu said Hong Kong should be more proactive in adopting new technologies.

"We should have an open mindset to embrace new technologies, especially in IoT hardware technology like the robots we are looking at today. There's a lot of great examples in the mainland. In the last ten years, there has been a massive deployment of emerging technologies," he said.

"With a gap of ten years, we are missing a lot of things. Hopefully, we can catch up and maybe in terms of regulation, we can relax a little bit so that some of these technologies can be adopted in Hong Kong."

They will visit Guangzhou on Monday before wrapping up their trip.

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