National legislators and political advisers from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region have called for deepening coordinated development across multiple sectors in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, including intellectual property (IP) trading, transportation networks, digital education, and cross-border employment.
The appeals were documented in their proposals and suggestion for the upcoming national “two sessions” — the annual plenary meetings of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, and the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the country's top political advisory body, set to be held in early March in Beijing.
William Wong Kam-fai, a Hong Kong member of CPPCC National Committee and a lawmaker, proposed a one-stop cross-border IP trading platform in the Greater Bay Area. Wong said at a news conference on Tuesday that given the rapid growth of technological innovation and cultural creativity in the 11-city cluster, the platform would help commercialize innovations and tackle challenges in cashing out IPs and lowering matchmaking costs..
Wong suggested positioning the platform as "cross-border, cross-sector, and asset-oriented”, serving the region while reaching wider domestic and overseas markets. He believes that the platform could leverage Hong Kong's professional services for trading rules, settlement and arbitration by establishing a headquarters in the city, with sub-centers in Shenzhen and Zhuhai for better accesses to cultural and high-tech industries. The operation of the platform should be backed by mutual recognition, tax incentives, financial support, and professional services, he added.
The platform would boost the Greater Bay Area's global influence in innovation value chain and cultural exports, Wong said.
He also called for further optimizing the public transportation network between Hong Kong and other Greater Bay Area cities, particularly through enhancing high-speed rail connections.
Wong proposed introducing a mechanism coordinated by central authorities to optimize high-speed train frequencies and introduce dynamic timetables to better match passenger flows. He also suggested piloting a "metro-style" service on the Shenzhen-Hong Kong high-speed rail section to reduce travel costs, and called for a cross-border transportation coordination mechanism to facilitate data sharing and integrated smart governance.
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Ken Wong Kam-leung, a Hong Kong deputy to the NPC and a veteran educator, called for coordinated development of digital education across Greater Bay Area cities. He noted that cities in the region have complementary strengths, such as Hong Kong's expertise in curriculum design and Shenzhen's strong technological innovation capabilities.
He proposed establishing a school alliance for digital education demonstration, which could develop into an online education community enabling two-way flows of quality teaching resources. He also called for jointly enhancing young people's digital literacy and cultivating high-quality innovative talent for the country with measures like co-developing immersive virtual reality and augment reality digital courses and organizing youth digital technology competitions.
Another Hong Kong member of the CPPCC National Committee Kingsley Wong Kwok, who also chairs the city’s largest labor group — the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions — urged better cross-border professional services policies in the Greater Bay Area.
He noted that while Shenzhen, the Nansha District of Guangzhou, and Zhuhai have recognized non-Chinese mainland professional qualifications, such as some in engineering construction, urban planning, healthcare, certified professionals are still limited to practicing only in the city where they are accredited.
Wong urged expanding the range of recognized qualifications and extending practice rights to other Greater Bay Area cities to fully leverage professional talent.
