Unique strengths give HK key role: Wang
Hong Kong has sufficient unique advantages to contribute to and “share the cake” in the country’s overall development, the central government’s top liaison official in Hong Kong wrote on Friday.
Wang Zhimin, director of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, made his point in an article he wrote to the overseas edition of People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China.
His remark came one day after Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor signed an agreement with the country’s top economic planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission, detailing the city’s cooperation with the Chinese mainland under the Belt and Road Initiative.
Hailing new opportunities presented to the city, Wang said major national development strategies such as the Belt and Road Initiative, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and renminbi internationalization are significant platforms through which Hong Kong can integrate into the country’s overall development.
He urged the SAR to cherish these potential development opportunities.
According to the Belt and Road cooperation arrangement, the central government supports Hong Kong’s contribution to the nation’s global development plan mainly in four areas where Hong Kong has an edge: finance and investment; infrastructure and shipping; economics and trade; and dispute resolution services.
Meanwhile, in the report delivered at the Communist Party of China’s 19th National Congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping set the “one country, two systems” principle as one of the basic strategies for developing socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era. Wang said it laid out a new development plan and new position for Hong Kong in the national rejuvenation, and entrusted the “one country, two systems” principle with higher “political requirement”.
To meet the essential requirement of implementing “one country, two systems” and to maintain Hong Kong’s long-term prosperity, Wang said, patriots must play the principal role in the city’s governance.
Thus it is vital to foster greater patriotism and a stronger sense of national identity among the people in Hong Kong, especially the city’s youth, in order to build up a mainstream social ideology in accordance with “one country, two systems”, he added.
Wang reiterated Hong Kong’s constitutional responsibility on national security under “one country, two systems” and urged the city to carefully consider this.
He stressed there should not be “two systems” in terms of safeguarding the country’s sovereignty and security. Any regions within Chinese territory shouldn’t become loopholes of national security, he said.
Wang also said that the country’s Constitution remained one of the fundamental pillars when it came to implementing “one country, two systems”. It made the constitutional foundation of Hong Kong along with the Basic Law, the SAR’s constitutional document.