He had to adjust to the fast-paced working culture of his mainland colleagues, pick up their slang and jokes, and explain Hong Kong healthcare concepts to locals.

He now leads a team of nine, manages operations for the group’s clinics, conducts training and takes mainland medical staff on exchanges to Hong Kong.

“I see myself playing a bridging role between Hong Kong and the mainland,” he said. “I have been doing my part and contributing to Hong Kong’s integration into the Greater Bay Area.”

Five years after Beijing declared its goal to turn the bay area – comprising Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities in Guangdong – into a hi-tech economic powerhouse to rival California’s Silicon Valley by 2035, Hongkongers like Lim and businesses in the city are slowly recognising the region’s massive opportunities.

Measures such as allowing northbound travel for Hong Kong vehicles and infrastructure projects like a new land checkpoint have made it easier than ever for people and goods to move across the border.

Hongkongers made more than 53 million trips across the border last year. Over the current Lunar New Year period, the Immigration Department expected 7.5 million trips by Hongkongers and visitors from February 9 to February 17.

According to China’s census published in 2021, more than 371,000 Hongkongers were living on the mainland, accounting for about 5 per cent of the city’s population that year. Even younger Hongkongers, who once balked at the idea of studying or working on the mainland, have begun to come around.

But experts and politicians interviewed by the Post said more needed to be done, as Hong Kong had yet to take full advantage of opportunities in the bay area vision.

They said the city also had to speed up developing new industries, or risk losing its edge over the mainland cities.

Blueprint’s key roles for Hong Kong

That makes it larger and more populous than the world’s three leading bay areas in New York, Tokyo and San Francisco.

The region is made up of Hong Kong and Macau and the Guangdong cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing.

In Beijing’s blueprint, Hong Kong is a key city expected to play several roles, from consolidating its international status in finance, aviation and trade, to strengthening professional services, as well as building closer ties with the mainland cities, connecting them with the global community.

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Guo Wanda, executive vice-president of the China Development Institute, a Shenzhen-based think tank, said the disruptions had hit Hong Kong’s economy, and the border closures affected its ability to connect to the mainland and be a bridge to the outside world.

All that, together with rising tensions in the US-China trade war, weakened the city’s status as an international financial hub, he added.

He pointed to the new checkpoint at Heung Yuen Wai in Hong Kong’s North district that opened to cross-border passengers last year, and income tax concessions for residents from the city working in Guangzhou’s Nansha district between 2022 and 2026.

He also cited how Hong Kong educational institutions had set up new campuses in mainland cities for Hongkongers.

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“The problem does not lie in whether policies in the mainland cities are bold enough,” he said. “It is on Hongkongers – how much do they know about the policies and the places?

“Even after knowing about them, the problem is whether they are willing to walk out of their comfort zone and grab the chances.”

Leung thought it was a good start that more Hongkongers had begun crossing the border to stretch their Hong Kong dollars by shopping and dining out there for considerably less than at home.

He said Hong Kong catering entrepreneurs should consider expanding to the mainland and adapting to the market, and sector associations should increase services across the border by advocating beneficial policies and assisting their members.

A change in younger Hongkongers

Despite Leung’s concerns, anecdotal evidence suggests that younger Hongkongers have become more open to seizing opportunities across the border.

The latest annual survey of about 1,000 people under 40 by the Hong Kong-Guangdong Youth Association indicated last month that more adult Hongkongers under 40 were willing to work in mainland cities in the bay area.

The percentage rose from 22 per cent in 2019 to a high of 66 per cent last year.

During that period, more than 80 major incubation centres opened across the bay area to attract young Hong Kong and Macau entrepreneurs to develop their start-ups there.

Media reports said that as of last July, the mainland centres had helped more than 4,000 projects from the two cities.

After learning some hard lessons about doing business on the mainland, Hongkonger Ron Lam Kwong and his partners set up the Global Catering Incubation Centre in 2021 in Zhuhai’s Hengqin island, a priority development area in the bay area.

The 40-year-old started his iFood Macau mobile app in Macau in 2010 to list and review the city’s restaurants and five years later, expanded to neighbouring Zhuhai.

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Despite cheap rent and manpower costs in Zhuhai, there were difficulties setting up a business on the mainland, not least learning its labour laws and regulations.

His experience prompted him to set up an incubation centre to help newcomers to the mainland market. It offers consultation and mainland company registration services, and even a kitchen and live-streaming rooms and facilities to promote products online.

“I am playing the role of a companion, a guide for businesses expanding across the border,” Lam said.

He found that many Hong Kong companies faced difficulty ensuring a consistent product quality after moving to the mainland as they had to work with different raw materials.

They also grappled with understanding and catering to mainlanders’ tastes and demands.

But Lam agreed that there were now more preferential policies, such as rent and housing subsidies, incubation centres and government support, all of which made it easier for businesses to set up.

He set up his Hong Kong base in Lai Chi Kok in January and hoped to help more of the city’s businesses move across the border.

“Hong Kong businesses have huge potential to expand into the mainland market, and mainland firms also long to come to Hong Kong,” he said. “The integration between the two places has been speeding up.”

Professor Christopher Chao Yu-hang, vice-president of research and innovation at Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University, said more local start-ups were willing to tap into the vast mainland market.

He also observed that there was more investment capital from across the border in recent years but large remittances were an issue as it took time to gain the necessary approval to proceed.

“The capital flow is not 100 per cent smooth,” Chao said. “We have to seek practical solutions as it can hinder the capital flow of the companies.”

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Time for Hong Kong to catch up

In Beijing’s 2019 blueprint for the bay area, Hong Kong was to consolidate its status as an international hub for finance, trade, transport and aviation.

The city was also expected to develop its reputation as a global innovation and technology centre and nurture emerging industries, which scholars said had been slow to happen.

Chao said while the city had made progress in information and technology, its strength lay more in connecting mainland cities and technological products with the world, and this could be strengthened.

“Hong Kong has its edge in design, fundamental research, management system and foreign capital flow,” he said. “It can attract the overseas market and gradually integrate with the mainland.”

The government also had to speed up the construction of infrastructure and make clear its plans for the innovation and technology cooperation zone with Shenzhen coming up at the Lok Ma Chau Loop.

Located on both sides of the Shenzhen River – the border between Hong Kong and the mainland – the zone will have an international innovation centre in a 300-hectare (741-acre) area on the Shenzhen side and another 87-hectare area at Lok Ma Chau Loop on the Hong Kong side.

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Some facilities in Shenzhen have begun operating, whereas Hong Kong is still developing its first three buildings, due to be completed from the end of this year.

The Hong Kong Science Park’s branch in Shenzhen opened last September and was among the first projects choosing to operate on the mainland side of the zone.

With a gross floor area of 31,000 square metres, almost 20 times the size of the Hong Kong Coliseum, the park houses more than 30 companies, mostly from Hong Kong and a few from the mainland, covering big data, artificial intelligence, healthcare and microelectronics.

Jiying Technology Company, a Hong Kong tech start-up established in 2019 and specialising in using artificial intelligence to resolve medical issues, was one of them.

It aimed to use its Shenzhen base to launch products in the massive mainland market, while allowing its Hong Kong centre to focus on research.

Chief strategy officer Eric Kong Siu-ming said the proximity of Shenzhen and the Science Park’s support in dealing with mainland authorities were plus factors.

Kong said stomach and bowel cancers were among the top killers on the mainland but many patients were not diagnosed early as manual scans could miss the signs.

His company uses artificial intelligence technology to help doctors to identify suspicious areas by sight and increase the early detection rate.

He urged the authorities to do more to ease restrictions on access to mainland scientific research data and offer more funding to recruit mainland talent.

Peter Mok Wai-hin, head of the Greater Bay Area of the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation, said there were plans to house up to 150 companies at the Shenzhen site over the next year or two.

The Science Park also planned to set up branches in other bay area cities including Guangzhou, Dongguan and Foshan to serve 500 to 600 firms on the mainland within five years.

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Looking ahead, urban planning professor Roger Chan Chun-kwong of the University of Hong Kong said innovation and technology would be key to developing the bay area as they could drive sustainable economic growth.

He said Hong Kong should continue its work in this area and forge closer collaboration with mainland cities.

“Along with the innovation parks, the Greater Bay Area will be in the best place to compete with other bay areas,” he said.

Despite the challenges, Guo from the Shenzhen think tank said Hong Kong still had its edge in growing into an international innovation hub that could attract global and mainland talent.

He noted that its universities, including Chinese University and the University of Science and Technology, had set up branches across the border.

“Hong Kong’s position as a core engine and its role in innovation have not changed from the blueprint,” he said. “But the city itself has to think of how to consolidate and enhance its competitiveness.”

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Zhang Yuge, director of the think tank’s department of Hong Kong, Macau and regional development, said Hong Kong, with its institutional advantages of common law, market economy and global network and the free flow of capital and data, remained a model for the nine mainland cities.

Hong Kong served as a benchmark in the bay area’s development and the Guangdong cities had adjusted their systems to be in line with Hong Kong, he said.

Since the reopening of the borders last year at the end of the pandemic, many policies began taking effect, with progress made in transport, border clearance, exchanges of people and others, Zhang said.

“If the progress of the first four years can be viewed as ‘running at a constant speed’, last year it sped up,” he said.