China’s master-plan rings alarm bells in Hong Kong
The Greater Bay Area seems to threaten Hong Kong’s special status
IT DOES NOT lack ambition. On February 18th China unveiled a long-awaited master blueprint for the Greater Bay Area (GBA), a mammoth urban cluster comprising the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, and nine cities in the southern province of Guangdong. The GBA will boast a population of 71m and a total area of 56,000 square kilometres. It will become by far the world’s biggest integrated “bay area”, surpassing rivals such as Tokyo and San Francisco. The master plan calls on the GBA to play “the leading role in the country’s economic development”.
This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “At bay”
From the February 23rd 2019 edition
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