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2019 April
Greater Bay Area: New Arena for Cultural Industries

Apart from economic and technological areas, there is still much room for cooperation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (Greater Bay Area). In the context of the Greater Bay Area, the cities in it share not only geographical proximity, but also similar languages, cultures and customs, which are conducive to jointly exploring interactions and collaborations among cultural and art industries.

 

Ma Fung-kwok: Sharing Same Cultural Roots Helps Co-development of Industries

Ma Fung-kwok, NPC Deputy and Legislative Council Member of the Sports, Performing Arts, Culture and Publications functional constituency, said that the various Greater Bay Area (Greater Bay Area) cities, with a vast development space covering 70 million people, can provide Hong Kong’s arts and cultural sector as their languages, cultures and customs are similar. The Government and industries must work together to get a head start in order to fully tap this market.

 

Hong Kong has always had a unique cultural atmosphere as an international metropolitan city with a blend of Chinese and Western cultures. Ma pointed out that Hong Kong, benefitting from its competitive edge in timing, geographical location and people, has continuously produced lots of talents and excellent works in films, TV series, Cantonese pop songs, and Cantonese operas over the years. Many films, TV series and music works are also popular among the people of the Pearl River Delta region.

 

Greater Bay Area provides market and space

Ma stressed that in the Outline Development Plan for the Greater Bay Area, the Central Government specifically put forward the idea of jointly developing a cultured bay area to drive the development of culture, arts and sports in the Greater Bay Area. It also expressed support for Hong Kong to become a film and TV exhibition hub, which can consolidate its status as a creative capital. The industries must leverage their own strengths to capture the major opportunities arising from the Greater Bay Area.

 

As with the challenges faced by many Hong Kong industries, the arts and cultural sector also faces difficulties such as rising rents, limited venues and relatively small markets. Ma said that the Greater Bay Area, with a population of 70 million people, has cities that are of the same roots and also deeply influenced and enriched by Lingnan culture in such diverse fields as ideas, education, literature, arts, dialects, folk customs, food and beverages. In the future, the Greater Bay Area’s nine cities and two special administration regions are set to have more frequent interactions and collaborations among their arts and cultural industries, and provide Hong Kong’s industries with a tenfold increase in audiences, ample performance venues, and a large development space, all of which will help eliminate their current difficulties.

 

Adapt to each other’s differences

Nevertheless, there are differences between the arts and cultural industries of the Mainland and Hong Kong in modes of operation and regulations. Ma believes that both places need time to adapt and figure out how best to work with each other in order to develop arts and cultural fields that are adapted to the Greater Bay Area market.

 

Ma pointed out that the HKSAR Government can play an important role in this regard. Besides organizing delegations to the Greater Bay Area to help Hong Kong industries keep abreast of the arts and cultural development in the Greater Bay Area’s cities, seek opportunities to interact with their local counterparts and strive for future cooperation, more importantly, the HKSAR Government can step up communications with the Central Government and local governments to make appropriate adjustments to the existing regulatory systems to help expedite the implementation of the development plan. This will encourage people in the industries to go to the Greater Bay Area for development and take the first step to tap the local market.

 

Be open to new ideas and models

“Hong Kong industries should be open to new creative ideas and collaborative models in interacting and cooperating with their Mainland counterparts. This will also broaden their horizon and inject new ideas into arts and cultural industries that focus on creativity.” Ma hopes that the Greater Bay Area can provide the residents of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao with high-quality spaces and environments suited to different needs such as starting a business, employment, living, retirement, education and investment. Creating an arts and cultural atmosphere that enriches the mind and soul is also an indispensable part of this. These will rely on the industries’ concerted efforts to make the people have a stronger sense of belonging and take pride in being the “People of Greater Bay Area”.

 

Freeman Lau: Shenzhen-Hong Kong Cooperation as Starting Point

Cultural industries are both a spiritual expression of a place and an important economic driver. The recently unveiled Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area sets a goal of “Jointly Developing a Cultured Bay Area”, which indicates that Hong Kong’s cultural industries will have a wider scope for development. With regard to Hong Kong’s cultural interactions and industrial cooperation with other Greater Bay Area cities, Freeman Lau, Secretary General of the Hong Kong Federation of Design Associations (FHKDA), strongly encouraged Hong Kong designers to broaden their horizons.

 

Design Twin-Cities to link up Greater Bay Area resources

In 2016, Hong Kong and Shenzhen signed the Agreement on Promoting Co-operation in Creative Industries to strengthen cooperation and interaction between the creative industries of both places, with the objective of creating one of the largest “design twin-cities” in the Asian region. “Zetta Bridge” in Qianhai, Shenzhen, which is set to be completed middle of this year, is one of FHKDA’s key projects. It is a platform for bringing together specialized services for the cultural, design and creative industries.

 

A key development project of the “Belt and Road Initiative” and the Greater Bay Area, “Zetta Bridge” aims to create a network of three to five design and creative industrial parks in the Mainland. It provides business matching services with the goal of enabling industrial cooperation. Through a specialized service platform, it helps businesses or individuals tap the Mainland market and seek good opportunities for business development.

 

“Zetta Bridge” brings together the mutually beneficial strengths of the Qianhai Free Trade Zone and the integrated strengths of the Shenzhen-Hong Kong “Design Twin-Cities”, serving and linking up the human resource / manufacturing industry chains and funding resources in the Greater Bay Area’s “9+2 city cluster”, as well as tapping B&R’s cross-border trade market.

 

Leverage advantages as an international city

Lau said that Western design philosophy is strong in Hong Kong as it was once a British colony. Moreover, it has the advantages of being an international city. As a result, local design talents have an international perspective that is conducive to developing overseas cooperation projects.

 

Hong Kong has about 40,000 cultural and creative businesses with over 200,000 employees, including a wide variety of design talents. In Lau’s view, Hong Kong has a limited population and market size, while the Greater Bay Area has a population of 70 million that presents many possibilities for cultural interactions and industrial development, as well as opportunities for Hong Kong businesses to develop externally. He added that Hong Kong has the advantages and characteristics of an international city and many of its businesses are operating and investing in B&R countries, so it can serve as a bridge for cultural interactions among itself, the Mainland and other countries, helping the Greater Bay Area and the rest of the country propagate their artistic and cultural works globally.

 

Greater Bay Area brings opportunities for development and showcase of talents

Lau stressed that Hong Kong needs to shift from passive to proactive engagement in the Greater Bay Area’s cultural industries. The Greater Bay Area has no shortage of design talents, but Lau believes that there is still a lack of international elements in their creations, and among the Greater Bay Area cities, Hong Kong and Shenzhen are leading in terms of standards of creativity and design, so he is confident that Hong Kong’s design talents can get a lot of opportunities to develop and showcase their talents in the Greater Bay Area.

 

Last year, FHKDA and the Shenzhen City of Design Promotion Association (SDPA) jointly held the “2018 Hong Kong-Shenzhen Design Twin-Cities” exhibition with the theme of “Inheriting the Future”. They aimed to use Shenzhen-Hong Kong cooperation as a starting point for the development of the Greater Bay Area’s creative industries. Lau also advised Hong Kong designers to actively participate in the cooperation schemes of the Greater Bay Area’s cultural industries to showcase their unique creative mindset, maintaining their roots in Hong Kong, pursuing their development in the Mainland and then setting their eyes on the world.