Hong Kong’s first bullet train is to glide out of a sleek harbor front railway station bound for mainland China today, launching a new era of integration and raising fears for some for the territory’s cherished freedoms.
Unlike other cross-border connections, the US$11 billion train project has stoked considerable controversy, with Hong Kong having had to concede part of its jurisdiction to China for the first time.
Passengers entering the modernist building would have their documents stamped by Chinese immigration officers and would be subject to Chinese law while zipping across Hong Kong at 200kph.
Hong Kong and Beijing officials have justified the unusual arrangement as a one-off, while touting its logistical and economic benefits, but critics say it symbolizes continuing Chinese assimilation of Hong Kong.
“I worry that Hong Kong will no longer be Hong Kong,” said Martin Lee (李柱銘), a veteran democrat and barrister who is fighting to derail the project in the territory’s courts.
He said Hong Kong risks losing its allure as a financial hub underpinned by strong rule of law, as Beijing steps up a push to fuse it into a vast hinterland of the Pearl River Delta, including nine Chinese cities dubbed the Greater Bay Area.
Several other infrastructure projects are to open this year, including a US$20 billion sea bridge to Macau and Zhuhai, while Beijing is now working with Chinese tech giant Tencent to let people replace their travel documents by using WeChat to cross the border.
“Hong Kong will be completely submerged into the Greater Bay and we don’t know what it’s going to be like,” Lee said. “That’s the worrying thing. Hong Kong is going to be put like a little ant into a box.”
Beijing has in recent years struggled to win hearts and minds, especially among young people who reject any notion of being part of China and have chafed at perceived meddling in Hong Kong’s affairs.
Hong Kong officials dismissed concerns that Hong Kong’s identity was being swamped.
“In such a closely knitted hinterland, there is always a wish to bring down any sort of unnecessary barriers,” Hong Kong Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Edward Yau (邱騰華) said.
“But that’s not to say compromising on ‘one country, two systems,’” Yau added, referring to the formula by which Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule with the promise that its “capitalist system and way of life” would remain unchanged until at least 2047.
“The bottom line will still be one country, two systems,” Yau said. “The [Hong Kong] Basic Law does not have an expiry date of 2047.”
Bernard Chan (陳智思), who runs an insurance business and sits on Hong Kong’s Executive Council, which advises the government on policy, said he believes China wants to make Hong Kong work in its best interests.
The high-speed rail and bridge are to bolster existing infrastructure that already allows more than 600,000 people to shuttle between the two sides daily by road, rail and sea.
Beijing wants the Greater Bay Area — home to about 68 million people with a combined GDP of US$1.5 trillion, about that of Australia or South Korea — to model itself on San Francisco Bay and Tokyo Bay to better meld people, goods and sectors, including finance, tourism, logistics, manufacturing and technology.
“The truth of the matter is, of course, we are integrating fast, economically and socially,” Chan said. “The one part that is not integrating at all is politics.”
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