|
Related stories
|
|
Hand-in-Hand for Mutual Prosperity Ten Years' Cooperation between Beijing, Hong Kong
2007/07/10
Zhang Lifu, 19, hopes to get a job in an international company in Beijing after graduating from the Hong Kong Baptist University in 2009 with a major in business management. The Haidian District resident in June 2006 sat for China’s national college entrance exams and achieved a test score that was sufficient for admission into any top school on the Chinese mainland, but he chose to study in Hong Kong instead.
“Universities in Hong Kong are much more international in terms of teaching and infrastructure,” Zhang wrote in a blog on www.sina.com. “I believe Chinese companies wishing to operate in Hong Kong need people who have received higher educations in the territory; besides, I want to stay with my parents and perform my filial duty as their son.”
In Beijing, Li Tong, aka Jane Li, 21, wants to work with the Beijing office or branch of a Hong Kong company after finishing her post-graduate studies at the Beijing Political Sciences and Law University. For the past ten years, she has lived in Beijing with her father, a Hong Kong businessman who owns a trading company in the Chinese capital. Speaking in perfect Putonghua, standard spoken Chinese based on the Beijing dialect, she told Beijing Youth Daily that she will be equally happy if she can find a job in a company based in her hometown, Hong Kong. “On Hong Kong’s job market,” she said, “well-educated young people with an intimate knowledge of the mainland are most favoured. I have one more advantage, because I am a student of China’s economic and trade laws.”
In a way, young people like the two students may serve to showcase how close—and extensive—Beijing-Hong Kong relations have become since China resumed sovereignty over the territory on July 1, 1997. In the days leading up to the tenth anniversary of Hong Kong’s return, people in both cities agree that the frequently cited phrase, “hand-in-hand for mutual prosperity,” has been translated into reality.
CEPA Steps in to Help
“Since 1997, Beijing’s gross domestic product (GDP), calculated on a per capita basis, has grown from less than US$2,000 to more than US$6,000. Indeed the city owes much of its economic success to Hong Kong. For one thing: Hong Kong is now the top investor in Beijing, in terms of both the number of projects started by Hong Kong investors and the amount of investment they have actually made. According to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Commerce, they accounted for nearly 25 percent of the “foreign-funded” companies to which the city was then playing host. From 1997 to 2006, Hong Kong investors invested US$8.26 billion in Beijing, nearly 24 percent of the “foreign” investment realized in the city during the same period. Bilateral trade came to US$4.11 billion for 2006, a 7.7-fold increase over US$470 million for 1997.
Under the “going global” policy that encourages competent Chinese companies to invest outside the mainland, 71 Beijing companies are operating in Hong Kong, involving US$300 million in capital investment. Included are electronics giant Lenovo and some of the most renowned Zhongguo laozihao (China Time Honoured Brands) such as the Quanjude Beijing Roast Duck Restaurant and the Tongrentang Pharmacy, a famed supplier of traditional Chinese medicines. “Back in 1997,” the Municipal Bureau of Commerce noted on its Web site, “investment by Beijing in Hong Kong was virtually non-existent. Hong Kong now tops the list of recipient countries and regions of investment made by Beijing.”
Hong Kong companies, along with those of Macao and Taiwan, are counted as “foreign” and in general, are allowed the same treatment as foreign companies. In practice, however, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region enjoys a range of additional policy privileges with regard to business operations on the Chinese mainland. Beijing, the national capital, has consistently taken the lead in working to translate those policy privileges into reality.
In 2003, a SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic almost paralyzed Hong Kong, a financial, shipping and tourist centre in the world. The epidemic struck shortly after the territory had recovered from the East Asia financial crisis that reduced countries like the Republic of Korea to the verge of an economic collapse. As soon as the epidemic was brought under control, China’s central government stepped in to bolster Hong Kong by instituting what is known as the CEPA (Closer Economic Partnership Arrangements) that allows tariff-free imports by the mainland of goods verified as of Hong Kong and Macao origin. Beijing promptly responded positively to the opportunity, declaring that it welcomed the entry of Hong Kong retailers. At a press conference held in November 2003, the Municipal Bureau of Commerce made public its plans for implementation of the CEPA, under which Hong Kong companies would be allowed to set up outlets offering zero-tariff goods in the CBD (Central Business District) and other top shopping centres in the capital.
The CEPA became effective on January 1, 2004; on the same day a week-long fair opened at the Beijing International Exhibition Centre to promote tariff-free goods expected to arrive soon from Hong Kong and Macao. Tens of thousands of Beijingers attended the fair, happy to learn that goods from the two special administrative regions would be cheaper on the local market. Then, on February 25, the first batch of zero-tariff Hong Kong goods, in 273 categories, was shipped to Beijing, mostly consumer goods such as jewellery, cosmetics and garments. Again, in April, with support from the Beijing Municipal Government, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) organized another promotional activity in the same venue, “Style Hong Kong Beijing 2004,” to display the best products turned out by the territory’s fashion industry.
Under the CEPA, according to the HKTDC, the territory’s cost of exports to the mainland can be cut by up to 10 percent. In practice, Hong Kong companies operating in Beijing benefit much more than that. These companies are allowed to provide, in the form of wholly owned operations, real estate services involving self-owned or leased high standard property projects, as well as real estate services on a fee or contract basis. As part of its commitment upon accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), China committed itself to providing national treatment and market access to all member countries and regions of the world trade body at the end of a seven-year grace period beginning 2002. “For Hong Kong and Macao,” said Hong Kong-based newspaper Ta Kong Pao in an article celebrating the tenth anniversary of the territory’s return to China, “the CEPA means they were several years ahead of other WTO members to enjoy full access to the mainland market.”
2008 Olympics--One More Boost
“Bearing in mind the time-honoured maxim “the early bird gets the worm,” Hong Kong companies, retailers in particular, welcomed the CEPA with a near-panic buying of property in Beijing in anticipation of what the HKTDC called “a new dawn of Beijing-Hong Kong economic cooperation.” Within about one month of the central government announcing its CEPA plans in mid-2003, residential and office spaces valued at close to 300 million yuan (about US$40 million) were sold to Hong Kong companies resolved to settle in the Chinese capital for business. As some Beijing municipal officials see it, this marked the beginning of Hong Kong investors’ involvement in the city’s real estate industry which, over the years, has become a chief growth engine for the local economy. To be more precise, Hong Kong companies have funded virtually all the landmark property projects in Beijing, including the International Trade Center and the Oriental Plaza in Central Beijing.
The 2008 Beijing Olympics provided another strong impetus for cooperation between the two cities. Hong Kong will serve as the venue for the 2008 Olympic Games and Paralympic equestrian events. In May 2007, marketing development plans for the 2008 Olympics equestrian event were made public in both Hong Kong and Beijing. The Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) has said on its Web site that the 2008 Olympics will definitely increase the fame of Hong Kong as a world leader in horse racing, sporting and betting entertainment. Horse racing is so popular in Hong Kong, says the HKJC, that in this city with a population of seven million, every race is watched by an average of one million people on TV.
In both Beijing and Hong Kong, officials have time and again affirmed that by taking advantage of its cultural proximity to Beijing and by using its competitive edge in business and high-tech development, Hong Kong is playing a pivotal role in Beijing’s preparations for the Games. “Hong Kong companies are involved not only in construction of Olympic-specific venues, but also in development of the city’s cultural facilities and public works,” said Liu Zhi, deputy head of the Beijing Municipal Development and Reform Commission at a press conference in April 2007. The official, who doubles as deputy head of the Engineering Department of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG), also noted that Hong Kong will continue to play a big role during the post-Games era in the city’s infrastructural development, commerce and tourism.
In Hong Kong, the first outlet of franchised Olympics goods opened on March 27, 2007, on the 500th day in countdown to the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games on August 8, 2008. On sale were goods of 600 kinds, ranging from pins priced at HK$13 apiece to the “China Seal” of jade at HK$60,000. According Ta Kung Pao, the hottest-selling items were the five Fuwa, dolls of the Games’ mascots, also known as the “Five Friendlies.”
Cooperation to Continue
“Like Beijing, the capital of socialist China, Hong Kong is a success story though it is famed as a “paradise of capitalism.” On June 19, 2007, Margaret Thatcher told British Broadcasting Corporation Radio her fears that Hong Kong's economy might not prosper under Chinese communism have proved to be “largely groundless.” Thatcher, who at age 81 seldom meets with the press, was prime minister when the deal deciding Hong Kong's future was signed in 1984. She said she has not been disappointed by Hong Kong's development since Britain handed over the territory to China a decade ago. “I think we must be realistic,” she said.
Ten years ago, in 1977, FORTUNE, a sister magazine of the US TIME Magazine, predicted that Hong Kong’s return to “communist China” would “bring about its death.” Just a few days before Thatcher spoke to the BBC Radio, TIME admitted that the prediction was “infamously” and “incorrectly” made. In an article titled “Hong Kong's Future: Sunshine, with Clouds,” it noted that “for better, and for worse, Hong Kong’s future is tied to China’s.”
These remarks amount to an implicit recognition of the fact that over the past decade, Hong Kong would not have fared so well without its interactions with the Chinese mainland, in particular with Beijing and other leading cities. Addressing the Tenth Beijing-Hong Kong Economic Cooperation Forum held in Hong Kong in mid-November 2006, Chief Executive Donald Tsang of the Hong Kong SAR, thanked Beijing for what it had been doing to help Hong Kong maintain its prosperity. “Since 1997,” he said, “our cities have worked hand-in-hand for mutual prosperity and development under the principle of making full use of each other’s advantages to supplement each other’s needs.”
The First Beijing-Hong Kong Economic Forum was launched shortly after July 1, 1997, and since then the Forum has been an annual event, held alternately in Beijing and Hong Kong. In the words of Wang Qishan, mayor of Beijing, the Forum signals success in a joint effort by Beijing and Hong Kong to institutionalize their cooperation. Speaking on the same occasion, he told his Hong Kong counterpart that over the past decade, especially since the birth of the CEPA, “Beijing-Hong Kong cooperation has constantly expanded in scope and depth.”
As the mayor said, the Forum is no longer limited to economic and trade affairs. It has developed into a regular mechanism whereby the two cities may find, through discussion, the best way of cooperating in all fields of endeavour: tourism, cultural, legal, financial, banking, education, modern logistics, service industries, to cite only a few. Cooperation in high-tech development was a salient feature of every annual session of the Forum, from the first to the tenth. During the Tenth Forum, Beijing sought, for the first time, cooperation with Hong Kong in developing its cultural and creative industries. The topic will again be placed high on the agenda of the Eleventh Forum, which is to be held in Beijing in November, according to municipal officials.
Mechanisms like the Beijing-Hong Kong Economic Cooperation Forum are reinforced by exchange of visits by officials of both cities. It seems that Beijing, now striving to develop into an international metropolis, has much to learn from a Hong Kong that is already mature as an international metropolis. Two days before the Tenth Beijing-Hong Kong Economic Cooperation Forum opened on November 15, 2006, Mayor Wang travelled to Hong Kong to study Hong Kong’ experiences in handling urban traffic and public transport emergencies, Wen Wei Po newspaper of Hong Kong reported. The newspaper added that the mayor would visit, among other sites, the territory’s subway system, “highlighting Beijing’s eagerness and resolve to alleviate its traffic congestion before the 2008 Olympic Games.”
Cooperation between Beijing and Hong Kong will definitely continue, generation after generation. Timothy Fok Tsun-ting, the eldest son of Hong Kong tycoon Henry Fok Ying-tung, was quoted by China Daily as saying that he felt he had become a real Chinese the moment China’s national flag was hoisted over Hong Kong. He was a member of the territory’s Provisional Legislative Council that elected Tung Chee Hwa the first chief executive of the Hong Kong SAR. Looking to the future, he said the territory will have more to learn from the mainland, in particular from Beijing and Shanghai.
Zhang Lifu at the Hong Kong Baptist University and Li Dan at Beijing Political Sciences and Law University both pledge to help carry forward the cooperation between their hometowns. More are jointing them in the endeavour. In 2004, universities in Hong Kong recruited the first batch of 30 mainland students, including two from Beijing. Currently, 130 young men and women from Beijing are studying in eight leading universities in Hong Kong. Forty-nine of these enrolled in 2006. This year these schools are recruiting 1,300 students from the mainland, possibly including well over 100 from the Chinese capital.
Hundreds of students from Hong Kong are studying at universities in Beijing, mostly at Peking and Tsinghua universities, China’s top schools of higher learning. On June 21, some 8,000 students from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan sat for exams for entrance of mainland universities, and more than half of them were from Hong Kong.
京ICPè¯050057å·http://www.miibeian.gov.cn