Patrick Nip: Policy innovation is key to developing the Bay Area

Patrick Nip, Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs, believes that no review of the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area would be complete without proper coordination with the economic development of China as a whole. The official report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China states that a forthcoming new round of reform and open door policies will use the Bay Area as a means of implementing further reform and opening up to the wider world.

Nip comments that the most important focal points for the Bay Area initiative are policy breakthroughs and policy innovations. As the Bay Area encompasses “One Country, Two Systems” and three separate customs areas, a top-down design is essential to put in place the essential factors for production and achieve convenient, unimpeded links. The Central Government created the Leadership Group for the Construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area for precisely this reason. The Group works with a variety of stakeholders to jointly research policy breakthroughs and innovations under the direction of the most senior levels of the Central Government.

The development of the Bay Area includes efforts to improve the economy, deliver social progress and improve public wellbeing. Nip comments that the goal of the government’s work is to achieve breakthroughs in certain fields, so that the space and talent development provided by the Bay Area can be used to develop the Bay Area into a region with a high quality of life and unimpeded links and connections.

However, delivering these goals for the Bay Area based solely on government development would be extremely difficult. Nip notes that promoting the development of the Bay Area will require combined efforts to explore new opportunities; and for this reason, the Government of HKSAR is working closely with governments in many regions to drive policy breakthroughs and innovations, in the expectation that such collaborations will deliver further improvements to Hong Kong’s social wellbeing.