[The bridge-and-tunnel route is seen as a cornerstone of China’s “Greater Bay Area” plan, which aims to connect the lucrative hubs of Hong Kong and Macau with 11 other southern Chinese cities. The idea is to draw more tourists and workers from the mainland region — home to more than 60 million people — to the semiautonomous cities.]
By Shibani Mahtani
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A
temporary fence sits at the border of Hong Kong and China on the Hong
Kong-Zhuhai-Macau
Bridge. (Alex Hofford/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
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HONG
KONG — After delays, almost
a decade of construction and swelling costs that reached $20 billion, the
world’s longest sea crossing — connecting Hong Kong to mainland China — opened
to traffic Tuesday as the latest megaproject with Beijing’s stamp.
The reviews for the 34-mile span?
China’s president, Xi Jinping, led the
cheerleading about the political symbolism and business benefits of the ribbon
of steel and concrete linking the former British colony Hong Kong and the once
Portugese-held Macau.
In bustling Hong Kong, however, many wondered
why they shouldered so much of the cost with so few tangible benefits.
After all, it’s only about a 30-minute faster
trip to the mainland from Hong Kong on the new Hong Kong-Macau-Zhuhai span
compared with crossing over the existing bridge routes. In Macau, the upgrade
is clearer. A ferry was the only way to reach the mainland.
But that’s not seeing the full picture, say
Chinese officials.
The bridge-and-tunnel route is seen as a
cornerstone of China’s “Greater Bay Area” plan, which aims to connect the
lucrative hubs of Hong Kong and Macau with 11 other southern Chinese cities.
The idea is to draw more tourists and workers from the mainland region — home
to more than 60 million people — to the semiautonomous cities.
On Tuesday in the mainland city of Zhuhai, Xi
declared the span officially open as digital fireworks exploded on a screen
behind him and officials ticked off another made-in-Chinese world record. (The
Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, for example, is 23 miles long, and the Eurotunnel
under the English Channel is 31.5 miles.)
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive,
lauded the “once in a lifetime” project as a connector that will tie Hong Kong
closer to the mainland.
Few in Hong Kong see it that way.
Residents here have lamented the steady
encroachment of mainland China into the city’s affairs, including efforts seen
by activists as trying to roll back the enclave’s traditions of relatively open
expression and freewheeling commerce.
Critics also balk against the rising number
of tourists and workers from Chinese cities into dense Hong Kong and the even
more crowded gambling hotspot, Macau.
Taxpayers in Hong Kong had to foot almost
half the bill. But it’s not easy for anyone just to pop on the new span.
Travelers need to go through a complicated
system to get permits from all three cities — a process that may take nearly
two weeks — and will also have to get insurance in all the cities.
Comments on a Hong Kong government video
explaining the process mocks the supposedly simple process for being unduly
bureaucratic, and notes that Hong Kong residents can simply take a ferry to
Macau, for instance, without any such requirements. Permits for private cars
allowed to cross the bridge will also be limited initially to just 5,000.
“It is very odd. It crosses that much of the
sea, and yet ordinary people cannot use it. What’s the point of that?” said
Claudia Mo, a pro-democracy lawmaker in Hong Kong. “This project is so
obviously a political symbol. I’m sure Beijing knew clearly that we didn’t
quite need it and that it was not necessary for the time being.”
The bridge, she added, is a “permanent
fixture and permanent reminder that Hong Kong is forever and ever connected to
the vast hinterland” of mainland China.
The project has also come under fire for
shoddy labor standards and for adverse environmental impacts. Over the
construction period, 19 workers died and dozens were injured, falling into the
sea below after a work platform collapsed.
Since construction sped up in recent years,
the population of the iconic Chinese white dolphins who call these waters home
has dropped from about 80 in 2012 to 47 in 2017, according to Taison Chang,
chairman of the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society. Environmental
mitigation efforts done before the construction of the bridge failed to keep
the dolphins in the area, he said, but work on the project proceeded anyway.
“We can clearly see that the dolphins in
North Lantau area almost disappeared in the whole area, close to the bridge
construction,” he said. “No one can really stop the project after [its
proponents] got the necessary environmental permits to go ahead with the
bridge.”
The bridge’s completion comes as China under
Xi is extending its grip over Hong Kong, a city of 7.4 million given a special
status when it was handed over from the British back to China in 1997.
Under the “one country, two systems” policy,
Hong Kong’s economic and political systems are supposed to remain untouched for
50 years from the handover — until 2047 — and distinct from Beijing, with its
own governments, judiciaries, currencies and so on.
A flurry of infrastructural development, however,
has served to physically bind the regions in a more tangible way. In late
September, a $11 billion high-speed rail link opened between Hong Kong and
mainland China, cutting the time between Hong Kong and major Chinese cities.
Beijing hopes the links will spur development
in these southern cities, which have historically led economic growth in China
— particularly amid a looming trade war with the United States.
Xi this week visited southern China to
celebrate the 40th anniversary of the economic reform policy spearheaded by
Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. Speaking Monday at Gree Electric Appliances in
Zhuhai, Xi emphasized the importance of “self-reliance” and the “real economy,”
rather than the “virtual economy.”
“Manufacturing is a key to the real economy,
and the core strength of manufacturing is innovation, the control of core
technologies,” he said. “We must seek innovation by relying on ourselves, and I
hope all enterprises will work in this direction.”
Hong Kong is at the center of that plan, with
deeper infrastructural links that will ease travel particularly from the
mainland into the city.
Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, is also pushing
for a land reclamation plan that will be the costliest infrastructure project
yet there, creating an artificial island that will be home to more than 1
million people. That island will be created close to the new sea crossing.
“It is all connected, the reclamation,
bridge, high speed rail,” Mo said. “It is all telling Hong Kong that you are
part of China, you are very much part of it, and you can’t get out of it.”
Luna Lin in Beijing contributed to this
article.
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