Macao and Hengqin are continuing to draw closer, with the deputy director of the Hengqin executive committee, Fu Yongge, recently revealing that 20,635 people from Macao were living in Hengqin as of March 2024 – an increase of 22.4 percent year-on-year.
According to local media outlets, Fu also stated that there were 4,991 people from Macao working in Hengqin in March, a jump of around 20 percent year-on-year. Meanwhile, 274 Macao students were living in Hengqin – an island district of the mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai, immediately adjacent to the SAR.
Cross border travel between the places has been growing as well, with official data indicating that over 16.7 million people passed through the Hengqin Port during 2023, a figure that is double that of 2022.
Between January and June of this year, the number of border crossings averaged at around 60,000 per day, while the daily vehicle crossings came to a total of 6,000.
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Business ties have also been strengthening. Fu said that the number of Macao-funded enterprises in Hengqin had reached a total of 6,208 as of April, an increase of around 12 percent year-on-year, or a jump of almost 38 percent in comparison to 2021, when Hengqin was first opened up to Macao businesses.
“In 2023, the total value of Macao-funded enterprises was over 2.05 billion yuan,” Fu stated. “The total revenue of Macao-funded enterprises was over 20.885 billion yuan, an increase of 35.7 percent year-on-year.”
In recent years, local and provincial governments have been looking to integrate Macao with Hengqin through initiatives such as the Macau New Neighbourhood housing development, a unified customs regime, as well as multiple-entry visas between the two territories.
Hengqin is seen as a vital part of Macao’s development, as the SAR suffers from a shortage of land. In 2020, Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng said that he hoped the neighbouring island could become “the second Macao.”
