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Friday 21 November 2008
HK Investors Wary of Province’s Slow Approach to Reform
Hong Kong investors on the mainland say they may not survive to benefit from a restructured Guangdong government if reform in Shenzhen alone takes five years.
HK Investors Wary of Province’s Slow Approach to Reform
Anita Lam 21 November 2008
Hong Kong investors on the mainland say they may not survive to benefit from a restructured Guangdong government if reform in Shenzhen alone takes five years.
At a meeting between Guangdong’s party chief Wang Yang and the province’s top officials that ended yesterday, Shenzhen Communist Party chief Liu Yupu said the city was aiming to create a simpler, more efficient administrative structure by the end of 2013.
“The municipal government would be responsible for planning and decision making while the district government would be responsible for law enforcement. When the time is right, district government will be eliminated or changed to service institutes,” Mr Liu said.
The plan is expected to spread to the rest of the country by 2020 if the pilot programme is successful.
Hong Kong academics and businessmen welcomed the initiatives, but Federation of Hong Kong Industries deputy chairman Stanley Lau Chin-ho said many of the city’s businesses in the Pearl River Delta might not live to see that day.
“More than 5,000 of the 70,000 Hong Kong enterprises on the mainland have already closed this year. We need more immediate measures than a long-term administrative reform to help us through the financial tsunami,” he said.
Pearl River Delta analyst Priscilla Lau Pui-king described the plan as “a bit too little, too late”.
“In five years, the financial tsunami will be long gone. The mainland government should be able to do much better than that,” she said.
Le Zheng , president of the Shenzhen Academy of Social Sciences, said the public always expected changes to come “big and quickly”, but this was not how things worked on the mainland.
“Mainland authorities prefer gradual progress. First they modify the management and the cultural system, then move on to reform the administrative system, legal system, public rights and enforcement.”
He rejected the suggestion that the reform was hardly a remedy for the current economic turmoil, saying the central government would impose more immediate measures as it deemed necessary.
Mr Lau, of the industries federation, welcomed another proposal mentioned in the meeting, which positioned Shantou as a future economic zone focusing on relations with Taiwanese investors.
“Traffic across the strait is bound to be busier in the future. Fujian alone will not be sufficient to handle the needs. It would be good to have another mainland centre for Taiwanese businessmen,” he said.
Zhuhai , meanwhile, was positioned to adopt Hong Kong’s “big market, small government” policy, Guangzhou would highlight its abilities in high technology, and Zhanjiang concentrate on being a centre for heavy industry.
Ms Lau, the analyst, said she found Guangdong’s attitude in co-operating with Hong Kong on economic issues insincere.
“They kept saying Hong Kong and cities in Guangdong should supplement one another, but they never really want to open the market to Hong Kong’s services sector,” she said. “They want to do the work themselves, to replace us as a financial and services hub.”
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HK Investors Wary of Province’s Slow Approach to Reform
Anita Lam
21 November 2008
Hong Kong investors on the mainland say they may not survive to benefit from a restructured Guangdong government if reform in Shenzhen alone takes five years.
At a meeting between Guangdong’s party chief Wang Yang and the province’s top officials that ended yesterday, Shenzhen Communist Party chief Liu Yupu said the city was aiming to create a simpler, more efficient administrative structure by the end of 2013.
“The municipal government would be responsible for planning and decision making while the district government would be responsible for law enforcement. When the time is right, district government will be eliminated or changed to service institutes,” Mr Liu said.
The plan is expected to spread to the rest of the country by 2020 if the pilot programme is successful.
Hong Kong academics and businessmen welcomed the initiatives, but Federation of Hong Kong Industries deputy chairman Stanley Lau Chin-ho said many of the city’s businesses in the Pearl River Delta might not live to see that day.
“More than 5,000 of the 70,000 Hong Kong enterprises on the mainland have already closed this year. We need more immediate measures than a long-term administrative reform to help us through the financial tsunami,” he said.
Pearl River Delta analyst Priscilla Lau Pui-king described the plan as “a bit too little, too late”.
“In five years, the financial tsunami will be long gone. The mainland government should be able to do much better than that,” she said.
Le Zheng , president of the Shenzhen Academy of Social Sciences, said the public always expected changes to come “big and quickly”, but this was not how things worked on the mainland.
“Mainland authorities prefer gradual progress. First they modify the management and the cultural system, then move on to reform the administrative system, legal system, public rights and enforcement.”
He rejected the suggestion that the reform was hardly a remedy for the current economic turmoil, saying the central government would impose more immediate measures as it deemed necessary.
Mr Lau, of the industries federation, welcomed another proposal mentioned in the meeting, which positioned Shantou as a future economic zone focusing on relations with Taiwanese investors.
“Traffic across the strait is bound to be busier in the future. Fujian alone will not be sufficient to handle the needs. It would be good to have another mainland centre for Taiwanese businessmen,” he said.
Zhuhai , meanwhile, was positioned to adopt Hong Kong’s “big market, small government” policy, Guangzhou would highlight its abilities in high technology, and Zhanjiang concentrate on being a centre for heavy industry.
Ms Lau, the analyst, said she found Guangdong’s attitude in co-operating with Hong Kong on economic issues insincere.
“They kept saying Hong Kong and cities in Guangdong should supplement one another, but they never really want to open the market to Hong Kong’s services sector,” she said. “They want to do the work themselves, to replace us as a financial and services hub.”
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