Environmental priorities key to Pearl Delta boom

When Wang Yang became the Party Secretary of Guangdong in December last year, he started exhorting officials to further liberate their thinking to maintain the province's position as the top economic power house in the country. This entailed liberating themselves from chasing high GDP growth and focusing on the welfare of the people.

One major push by Wang Yang, it seems, is in the realm of the environment. In the provincial Party Plenary Session in June, the proposal of working together with Hong Kong and Macau to build a "green Greater Pearl River Delta superior living circle" first cropped up. It was then put on the agenda in the annual summit meeting between Guangdong and Hong Kong in August.

Both Guangdong and Hong Kong are plagued by environmental problems, which cannot be solved by each administrative unit alone. Regional cooperation is therefore a necessity. There has been environmental cooperation between both after the latter's handover in 1997. It is however quite superficial, mostly on the level of information exchange. Now both sides see the need for closer cooperation, and are taking concrete steps to implement it.