Insight | Is Hengqin an empty promise for Macau?

Paulo Barbosa

Hengqin Island has undergone massive development over the past few years. When I first visited the neighboring island in 2009, there was almost nothing there besides some rustic restaurants serving tasty oysters.

Eight years after that visit, Hengqin’s development is quite visible from Taipa and Coloane. It is actually almost oppressing to see residential towers growing in Hengqin’s shoreline adjacent to Macau, almost like they are trying to keep up with the Joneses.

The latest news about Hengqin shows that the island is very rapidly becoming a tourist attraction, with theme parks like the Chimelong Ocean Kingdom standing as proof. Just recently, Real Madrid announced it would open an interactive virtual reality complex in Hengqin.  Media reports dubbed the island as “China’s answer to Florida’s Orlando.” Consequently, property prices have more than doubled over the past two years.

These are fantastic developments to an island that was left undeveloped for centuries. Up until World War II, the Portuguese had some military and religious outposts in three islands that stood very close to the Macau peninsula: D. João (known as Xiao Hengqin to the Chinese), Montanha (Da Hengqin) and Lapa (Wanzai). Territorial claims were abandoned in 1947 during the Chinese Civil War, when Macau governor Albano Rodrigues de Oliveira signed bilateral agreements with the Nationalists.

These historical claims and the rugged terrain partly explains why Hengqin was left undeveloped until 2009, when I first visited. “At its closest point to Macau, Hengqin is only 200 meters away, although it remains almost in its natural state, like it belongs to a faraway and undeveloped country,” I wrote back then. Those times are long gone.

Seen from Macau, the cooperation between Hengqin and Macau doesn’t match the initial expectations. Macau is spending huge amounts of money to develop Hengqin. What is it getting in return? Let’s recall: In June 2009, Beijing agreed that the new campus of University of Macau could be established in Hengqin, under a lease valid for a period of 40 years. The campus is already operating and the Cotai border has opened to 24-hour operation. Those are the only evident benefits to this region. I don’t see advantages coming from the Chinese Medicine Park, which, according to the director-general of the Hengqin New Area Administrative Committee, Niu Jing, was “paid for by Macau, while Hengqin gave the land.”

Around the time the campus was announced, other measures with far reaching consequences were hinted. Those measures indicated that the Chinese central government wanted Macau to play a major role in Hengqin’s development. But there are shortcomings that signal that the role of Macau is being minimized.

In 2010, English leaflets were distributed to foreign investors indicating that “a bilateral agreement will allow cars with Macau license to enter and leave Hengqin.”

In March 2011, when an agreement between Guangdong and the MSAR was signed in Beijing, Alexis Tam, who was the government spokesperson at the time, commented: “In a while, Macau residents will be able to go to Hengqin, inclusively taking their cars, and benefit from all the infrastructure that will be developed there, effectively opening to the [local] society to a space that is three times larger than Macau, and creating development opportunities that were never possible to have before.”

The initial intention from Beijing seemed to be generous to Macau. If people and vehicles could go to Hengqin without having the hassle of border controls (via a simple and automated system, like the one used by residents to travel between SARs), that would mean that the region would gain the breathing space it needs.

The authorities of the “Hengqin Area of Zhuhai” don’t seem to have the same cooperative strategy. For now, what we can see is that only the rich and the investors can benefit. See the ridiculous first phase of the scheme for Macau-registered vehicles to enter the island, implemented one year ago. The regulations were so restrictive that only a few car owners were eligible.