Shenzhen’s never-ending quest for modernity produces regular bouts of soul-searching, which are often reflected in commentaries published in official media. One of these, by an experienced writer, Fu Jingyi, which appeared recently in the Southern Metropolis Daily, focused on the city’s talent policy. It determined that the challenge of “optimizing” Shenzhen’s human resources was perhaps greater than many realized, and that creative solutions were called for.
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Huizhou, Shenzhen combine port operations
Here is a good story about Greater Bay Area integration that is working, and delivering results. Huizhou has a deepwater port with significant potential. Shenzhen has container traffic that it needs to manage better, as its existing ports at Yantian and Shekou are running at high capacity utilization. Putting their management together makes sense, and that is what they have done.
They are calling it the “Huiyan Combination Port” operation. It essentially involves closer collaboration between the Yantian and Huizhou container terminal, which enables streamlined customs declarations and inspection procedures for Huizhou Port, and improves handling procedures for loading and unloading international vessels in Yantian Port.
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Baishizhou: a tale of Shenzhen’s housing challenge
Shenzhen’s housing policies have been the focus of intense online discussion in recent months, with many commentators and analysts comparing them to Hong Kong’s. The city’s plans to build 1.7 million new homes by 2035, at a rate of more than 80,000 per year, are unthinkable for Hong Kong, where the government has said it hopes to build 10,000 new social-housing units in the next three years. Moreover, Shenzhen has made it clear that 40% of its housing supply will be earmarked for subsidized housing – in comparison with its neighbor, where 29.1% of households live in public rental housing and another 15.5% in subsidized home ownership housing.
However, Shenzhen is not without challenges of its own in achieving these goals. And sometimes, examples come to light showing the complexity of the city’s housing market. One such case is the redevelopment of the Baishizhou neighborhood.
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GBA talent map under planning
Recruitment agents, your days are numbered: A Greater Bay Area “talent map” is being prepared by the Shenzhen city government, according to local media. This will essentially be a platform built on a public database, with content supplied by “talent pools” as well as libraries from both the industrial sector and the government.
The aim is to better match skills with job opportunities using, no doubt, AI and other technologies. Moreover, this platform has ambitions to match resources with talent. In other words, if you are smart and have a good idea, your pursuit of financial and human resources should be as frictionless as possible.
Read more (in Chinese).
Mainland students flee to Shenzhen, some to campuses
As mainland students flee Hong Kong’s embattled university campuses for the safety of neighboring Shenzhen, a spotlight is being shone on the relationship between the Hong Kong universities and their affiliates across the border.
Fearing that they could become targets of the anti-government protesters who have turned their campus into a battlefield, mainland students staying at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Sha Tin have found themselves among the more fortunate, as the university has a Shenzhen campus that opened its doors to them from late yesterday.
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Hong Kong as regional HQ: time to move?
For those who care to look, the Hong Kong protests are exposing flaws in many assumptions about Hong Kong’s competitiveness. This is not only a short-term concern, either. As revenues come under pressure, partly due to the protests, partly due to a slowing Chinese economy, operating costs are inevitably being looked at more carefully by companies based in “Asia’s World City”. It would be surprising if only a few were considering moving or scaling back their operations here.
The question is: Can other cities in the Greater Bay Area offer compelling alternatives?
The short answer would be: Yes. But do some homework first.
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Visitors get a taste of Chinese online payments
Fintech Week is proving to be a global PR bonanza for Hong Kong. Local media have been buzzing for the past two days about Alipay’s decision to open its payment platform inside the Chinese mainland to foreigners, the announcement of which was clearly timed to coincide with the Hong Kong event. And Mu Changchun, the central bank’s whizzkid overseeing the imminent launch of the digital Renminbi, kept the momentum going yesterday by suggesting foreigners could use it, too.
As reported by SCMP, Mu said the central bank is working to separate the virtual currency from the banking system. “Actually it could be decoupled from traditional bank accounts,” he said during an event at Fintech Week, which is being held at the AsiaWorld-Expo. “Thus, those who don’t have bank accounts in China can still open a digital wallet and enjoy mobile payment services in China.”
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Top Shenzhen official busted for graft
Shenzhen has announced the fall from grace of a senior official: Li Longwen, former deputy director of the city’s Port Authority, has been dismissed from public office and expelled from the Party.
The announcement came after an investigation by the city’s Commission for Disciplinary Inspection, the anti-graft agency, which found that Li had “lost his faith” and was “not loyal to the Party”. Moreover, he had compounded his errors of judgment by confronting and challenging the investigation, according to the local media report.
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Office vacancy rates rise in all GBA cities
Savills has released a report on the Greater Bay Area’s office market that shows supply is increasing at a fast pace, pushing up vacancy rates.
While Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou remain in strong demand compared to the rest, even they are seeing rates that should be enough to keep landlords awake at night.
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Shenzhen confirms 6.6% growth, blames nothing
After the provincial government leaked Shenzhen’s GDP headline number for the first three quarters yesterday, causing a rush of commentary by bloggers and real-estate analysts, the city government decided today to clarify the reasons why its economy slowed so sharply, to 6.6% from 7.4% in the first six months.
Understandably, the report was full of numbers that the Shenzhen Daily tried to portray in a positive light.
At the heart of the data was an unmistakeable weakness: a sharp slowdown in industrial output and input, as we had expected in our report published yesterday.
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