There is a familiar saying that generations of Chinese schoolchildren have grown up with: Yao zhi fu, xian xiu lu, or “to get rich, build roads first”. It dates from the early years of reform and opening-up, when the idea sounded almost too simple to be a strategy. Four decades on, it still captures how the country thinks about development. It also captures, rather neatly, what happened on Monday, when the redeveloped Huanggang Port in Shenzhen welcomed its first passengers and, with them, a new chapter in Hong Kong-Shenzhen cooperation and integration facilitated by highly efficient 24-hour clearance services for passengers and vehicles.

What makes Huanggang different is not only its size but its logic. It employs an enhanced “collaborative inspection, joint clearance” model, requiring passengers using the automated channels to present their identity documents once for checks by both jurisdictions, instead of lining up twice as they did previously. Clearance that typically used to take about 30 minutes could come down to around five.

For a commuter, a student, a businessperson, or a family visiting relatives, five minutes against 30 is not a statistic. It is the difference between a border that feels like a barrier and one that feels like a gateway.

Seen from a distance, Huanggang is not an isolated project. It sits at the crossing point of several stories I have followed. Hong Kong’s first five-year plan, drawn up in step with the national 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30), identifies the Northern Link spur line to the new port as one of the major railway projects supporting the Northern Metropolis, and says the redeveloped crossing will add capacity to the city’s boundary control points. That matters because the Northern Metropolis is set to become Hong Kong’s new growth engine. Over roughly two decades, it is expected to house some 2.5 million residents and generate 650,000 jobs. A development of that scale cannot thrive if the border crossing on its doorstep is slow, congested or unpredictable. Predictability is everything.

The innovation side of the equation is even more tangible. The Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou cluster maintained its top position in the Global Innovation Index in September. Two pieces of that cluster sit in the same corner of the border as the new port. The Hong Kong Park of the Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone has attracted more than 100 tech enterprises and institutions since it opened in December, while the San Tin Technopole will develop 210 hectares of land within the Northern Metropolis for innovation and technology projects. Researchers, engineers, equipment and prototypes will need to cross the boundary frequently. A faster, smarter port turns two neighboring science parks into something closer to a single research campus.

The same applies to finance: September also brought the 40th edition of the Global Financial Centres Index, in which Hong Kong held third place and stayed as Asia’s top financial center for a fourth consecutive edition. Initial public offering fundraising surged 153 percent year-on-year in the first eight months of 2026, and the city recently overtook Switzerland as the world’s largest cross-border wealth booking center.

For a couple of years, we were told by some commentators that Hong Kong was “over” — however, numbers are a stubborn answer to that kind of claim. But rankings only record what has already been achieved; infrastructure is what makes the next round of achievements possible, because capital, technology and ideas all move more easily when people can.

There is another connection that deserves more attention, and it concerns the sky rather than the ground.

The three-runway system at Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA), which entered full operation in 2024, was never just a feat of engineering but a wager on the city’s future as a global connector. That wager is paying off. By the end of the 2025-26 financial year, around 140 airlines were connecting Hong Kong with more than 220 destinations, and the airport’s capacity is set to rise toward 120 million passengers and 10 million metric tons of cargo a year. HKIA handled 61 million passengers in 2025 and, with 5.07 million tons of cargo, was named the world’s busiest cargo airport for the 15th time since 2010.

Now put the two gateways side by side: The airport connects Hong Kong with the wider world, while Huanggang connects it, in a very practical sense, with Shenzhen, one of the Chinese mainland’s leading technology and manufacturing hubs. Premium perishables arriving by air can already reach destinations across the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area within hours through the Air-Land Fresh Product Exclusive Express Line, and a smoother land border clearance strengthens that chain further. This is what superconnector means in practice: a set of links that reinforce one another.

The 2026 Policy Address ties together the Northern Metropolis, the Greater Bay Area, and the city’s new engines of growth. What matters now is delivery, with boundary facilities, the airport, and the Northern Metropolis working as one system. Hong Kong has often been at its best when it connects dots that others leave apart. There is a human dimension too, since many residents now study, work or retire across the boundary and mainland visitors are vital to local retail and tourism. Easier crossings help both.

The opening of the new Huanggang Port is far more than a ribbon-cutting. It belongs to the same puzzle as the five-year plan, the Northern Metropolis, the airport expansion and the city’s rising global rankings. Each tells the same story from a different angle: A city that has chosen to connect rather than retreat.

The author is a fintech adviser, a researcher, and a former business analyst for a Hong Kong publicly listed company.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.