My Take | Hong Kong is losing competitiveness to cities on the mainland
- The danger Hong Kong faces is not that it might become ‘just another mainland city’, but that it is already subpar to many of its urban cousins across the border
People always fret about Hong Kong’s eroding competitiveness compared to other leading Asian cities. But the clear and present danger may be its lack of competitiveness against other major mainland cities, especially those in the Greater Bay Area. It’s not that it is in danger of becoming “just another mainland city”; if only that were so. Rather, it’s already subpar to its urban cousins across the border.
Witness the exodus of local people travelling en masse to shop and dine in Shenzhen and other nearby places. Just a few years ago, many of them wouldn’t dream of setting foot in mainland China, as they tried to lay waste to Hong Kong in a frenzy of rebellion and destruction against the local and central governments, in riots even worse than those against the colonial government in 1967.
Now, many have thrown caution to the wind and no longer fear being followed, tracked, surveilled or even detained and jailed, supposedly. Mainland shops, restaurants and cinemas are just too good, cheap and attractive for them to worry about all that now.
Change the narrative and you change the whole picture. Never say political restrictions do not work. Once you have neutralised the anti-government opposition and got rid of their foreign supporters, Hong Kong people go where they naturally would have gone. Once artificial barriers are removed, water flows where it naturally goes to find its levels.
So now they embrace a new cross-border lifestyle they once rejected. High-speed rail and the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge have cut travel times to less than an hour. A new Costco wholesale store has become practically a tourist attraction for Hongkongers. Malls, restaurants and neighbourhood shops are better and cheaper, and offer more variety than those in Hong Kong.
Not too long ago, people in Hong Kong complained about mainland visitors and called them names such as “locusts”, for swarming shopping districts and buying up everything, from baby milk formula to properties. Now the shoe is on the other foot; they are jamming the streets of Shenzhen. But mainlanders tend to be far more tolerant and magnanimous.
