Notes from Hong Kong

Newsletter #35

Mongkok at night. Photo by Chi Hung Wong on Unsplash

No newsletter this month, as I’m travelling in Hong Kong and China ahead of the UN World Data Forum 2023 in Hangzhou. So if you’re looking for sustainability updates, please stop now and come back next time when we'll resume regular programming. If you’re curious to hear a few brief thoughts on changes in Hong Kong, read on.

(For context, I was born in Hong Kong and grew up here, speak Cantonese, and worked as a journalist in the 1990s.)

The number one thing that stands out is the speed of cross-border integration in the Greater Bay Area which covers Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen and a number of cities in Guangdong province.

Most Hong Kong residents have a permit to enter the mainland which looks like another version of their ID card - this allows them to go back and forth almost as though the border doesn’t exist, they just have to swipe that permit - there is no immigration wall.

But the digital border is very real - Hong Kong lags China on digitization, and the ubiquitous payments apps like WeChat Pay and Alipay are the place where “One County, Two Systems” come into focus.

👉 Hong Kong residents and Chinese residents do not use the same version of WeChat Pay and Alipay. The Hong Kong versions of these apps are set up differently - with an +852 HK phone number, a HK identity card and a link to a HK bank account. They are not inter-operable in the mainland - they work in some places, not in others.

👉 Greater Bay Area integration is not just about administration, it is also human. Hong Kong is now very much a service hub for people from the mainland, whether they are passing through for tourism or business, or whether they have residency. That human element means that people from both sides of the border have one goal in common: to find a seamless and inexpensive way to swipe back and forth between internet coverage, payment apps and just digital life in general.

While I was standing in line at China Mobile trying to get help to verify the HK/China mainland SIM card I bought at the 7-11 at the airport, the guy in front of me from the mainland was trying in vain to get a Hong Kong phone plan (no residential address).

👉 Things are changing fast, and updates are mostly word of mouth or online, for example this YouTube channel that tracks all the latest cross-border stuff. It features reviews of which banks in China offer the fast track to open a mainland account, and has a very upbeat “it’s easy!” tone. (because, well, it’s never very easy)

👉 Since the land border opened up earlier this year, you can now get limited inter-operability for public transport in some Greater Bay Area cities via the HK apps. For example, I downloaded Alipay HK with a HK ID card and phone number (it was quite easy) and discovered that I can use it in the Shenzhen metro, as well as public buses in Guangzhou, Foshan and Zhongshan.

To sum up, things are getting easier if you need to travel to China. But my assumption that entering from Hong Kong would somehow be more natural or seamless was incorrect - it’s still tricky regardless where you’re coming from, but what makes the Hong Kong entry point unique is this persistent digital border, and the fact that much of the information you need is informal or anecdotal.

I’ll be back in May with more sustainability updates. In the meantime, if you enjoy these updates please do subscribe, share and comment.