Macau can learn how to develop through innovation from Shenzhen’s experience of its 40-year reform and opening-up, and play a unique role in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA) and the national development, Macau scholar Ip Kuai Peng has told Xinhua in a recent interview.
Ip, pro-rector of City University of Macau and director of the Research Center for Macau Social and Economic Development, said the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ) has grown into an important engine of the GBA from a small fishing village in 40 years, which is undoubtedly a successful model of reform and opening up.
Ip said he believed that the key to Shenzhen’s success is to emancipate people’s minds and take a series of forward-looking and pragmatic reforms. Such reforms have empowered scientific and technological innovation to be the engine of economic development.
Ip underlined that Shenzhen has improved its urban governance systems and capabilities, and built a market environment, a policy environment, and a public service system that are conducive to innovation, and promoted the free flow of talents, capital, information, technology and other factors in a “virtuous circle”.
“Shenzhen’s experience also provides valuable experience for Macau to promote moderate economic diversification and realize sustainable development,” he said.
In order to realize sustainable and healthy development, Macau should create both policies and an institutional environment conducive to innovation, strengthen cooperation with the other GBA cities to expand Macau’s space of development, he added.
He suggested that Macau use its advantages to cooperate with Shenzhen.
For example, Macau could make use of its resources as a service platform for business cooperation between China and Portuguese speaking countries (PSCs) and play its role as a window and a bridge to facilitate Shenzhen’s economic and trade cooperation with the PSCs, and help Shenzhen enterprises explore the PSCs’ markets.
Shenzhen has comprehensive modern industrial systems with a large number of iconic innovative enterprises, state key laboratories and a cluster of university resources, he noted.
Both sides can strengthen cooperation in scientific and technological innovation, such as the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Macau Science and Technology Innovation Corridor.
In recent years, Ip pointed out, Macau has been promoting some emerging industries such as finance, the MICE sector, and cultural industries. It has been designated as Creative City of Gastronomy by UNESCO and striven to become a world tourism and leisure center, he noted.
Ip said Macau could match Shenzhen’s advantages in financial services, e-commerce, and high-end tourism industry. For example, Macau could cooperate with Shezhen’s Qianhai financial reform pilot zone, in fields such as renminbi clearing and finance lease.
Regarding Zhuhai, Macau’s close neighbor city and also a SEZ, Ip said cooperation between Macau and Zhuhai can also learn from Shenzhen’s experience.
The central government has recently unveiled a list of 40 authorized measures to facilitate the pilot reforms in Shenzhen. Such innovation can inspire the development of the Hengqin Guangdong-Macau Deep Cooperation Zone between Macau and Zhuhai, he added.
He suggested that Macau and Zhuhai promote institutional innovation in civil and commercial laws, trade and tax regulations, explore policy coordination and planning convergence in fields of science and technology, finance, business and social welfare.
Thereby, the factors of talent, capital and technology could flow conveniently in Hengqin between Guangdong and Macau with a high degree of efficiency. The advantages and resources of Guangdong and Macau could be optimized and forged into a good example of collaborative innovation development of the GBA, he added. – Xinhua
