Inside Asian Gaming

May 2016 inside asian gaming 19 investment of US$1.6 billion and the first flowers to bloom in about two years. In March, four participating companies signed land leases: a Sino-Portuguese trade and services center; Hengqin World, combining business and travel services with a duty-free shopping mall; a headquarters building with hotel and shopping mall for Nam Kwong, the Macau-based Chinese state-owned conglomerate whose wide ranging activities include acting as the city’s leading food importer; and West Meets East, featuring cultural projects and catering to small and medium enterprises. Other Macau oriented projects in Hengqin include the Guangzhou-Macau Traditional Chinese Medicine Science and Technology Park, launched in 2011, and Inno Valley, an incubator with a special focus on young entrepreneurs from Macau that opened last June under the auspices of state-owned Hengqin Financial Investment Company. “Hengqin is positioned as an emerging city which could be developed to support Macau’s diversification, and the focus there is on business, finance and technology, with tourism only a small part, yet the last is all we hear about in Macau,” Mr Lee says. “There seems to be a huge gap between what they want and what investors in Macau are being told.” He adds, “Hengqin is there for Macau to show their appreciation to Beijing and for it in turn to be the backbone of new emerging businesses in Macau. Unfortunately all Hengqin gets are applications for foreign workers dormitories, bus depots and ... more foreign workers dormitories.” ​He believes “The easing of restrictions are mainly for Macau people to go over to Hengqin, presumably to set up and incubate their ​SMEs. Anything else is merely wishful thinking with no basis whatsoever.​” Tourism and recreation is just one of seven key industrial sectors designated for development by the Hengqin New Area Authority that oversees the island. They include logistics, financial services, traditional Chinese medicine and other health services, science and educational research and development, cultural and creative industries, and advanced and new technology. Authorities also aim for ecologically friendly, sustainable development of Hengqin, in line with Zhuhai’s reputation as one of China’s greenest and most livable cities. But the real key to connecting Macau and Hengqin remains the rail links. The spur from Zhuhai to Hengqin and the Jinwan Airport is expected to be completed in mid-2018. The Macau link, however, remains a wild card. The Taipa section of Macau’s light rail will be running in 2019, Secretary for Transportation and Public Works Raimundo do Rosário declared in December, but that may not include the connection to Hengqin. “We will have to wait another 10 to 20 years to see that happen given the delays in our light rail construction so let’s not get too ahead of ourselves,” Ben Lee cautions. Mr Ossolinski, more optimistic about the timing, says, once the infrastructure and policy pieces are in place, convergence of Macau and Hengqin as a single tourist destination will be worth the wait. He notes that Zhuhai already caters to visitors that can’t get visas to Macau with replicas of Macau landmarks such as Saint Paul’s ruins for photos and offers cruises around Macau. “If that doesn’t speak to pent up demand, nothing does,” Mr Ossolinski says. “To American investors, I say, let’s move Las Vegas and Orlando into one city.” Those two destinations, with a domestic market less than one- third the size of China, combined to welcome more than 100 million visitors last year.