This photo taken on July 8, 2022, shows a general view of commercial and residential buildings at Futian district in Shenzhen, in China's southern Guangdong province.
(PHOTO / AFP)
Shenzhen’s political advisers offered various suggestions for in-depth cooperation with Hong Kong at the Third Session of the Seventh Shenzhen Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference which began on Monday.
Fang Zhou, a Shenzhen political adviser who’s also research director of the One Country Two Systems Research Institute, believes that collaboration between the two cities has reached a new level that requires more institutional innovations
Allen Yeung, a political adviser in Shenzhen and also a Hong Kong deputy to the National People’s Congress, proposed that Shenzhen and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region jointly promote the flow of cross-boundary data, and establish an international data trading center.
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Hong Kong set up the Digital Economy Development Committee last year to accelerate the digital economy. As a member of the committee, Yeung is responsible for coordinating with the SAR in cross-boundary data projects, and exploring data flow pilot programs in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
He said Shenzhen can try to trade data with international buyers through Hong Kong, and trust eligible Hong Kong agencies concerning data storage and management, so that overseas companies could legitimately utilize Chinese mainland digital information.
Fang Zhou, another Shenzhen political adviser who’s also research director of the One Country Two Systems Research Institute, believes that collaboration between the two cities has reached a new level that requires more institutional innovations.
As the HKSAR government has already set up offices in many mainland cities, the Shenzhen government could launch similar projects for in-depth exchanges between Hong Kong and the mainland in the future, he said.
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Such offices can represent the Shenzhen municipal government in collaborating with all sectors of Hong Kong society, and allow Hong Kong people to access Shenzhen government services without having to go to the mainland, Fang said.
Fang also recommended that the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Cooperation Zone, wedged between the two cities, should be used as a “free technology port”.
“With the support of preferential policies, the zone should allow a more convenient flow of key technological innovation elements to help turn it into a comprehensive national science center,” he added.
