Sixteen emerging industries projects involving government-enterprise cooperation, new retailing, big data, brand marketing, and industry incubation were signed on Dec 23 to promote strategic partnership between Hengqin New Area and Macao.

The signing ceremony was hosted by both the Macao Affairs Bureau of the Hengqin Administrative Committee and Macao Commercial Post International Media Group.

Prosperous Hengqin New Area [Photo courtesy Zhuhai Daily]

Huang Yujie, director of the bureau, said the projects will contribute to the high-level opening-up of Hengqin and moderate economic diversification of Macao.

It is expected that the event will explore new modes and fields of Hengqin-Macao cooperation, and attract more Macao people to start up business in Hengqin, said Zhu Haisheng, head of the Macao Commercial Post. One of the first enterprises to settle in Hengqin with a cross-border office mode, the media outlet is a witness to, participant in, and beneficiary of Hengqin-Macao cooperation.

In recent years, Hengqin has been making development space available for land-strapped Macao and helping it break the development bottleneck resulting from a monolithic industrial structure.

To date, Hengqin is home to more than 2,160 Macao enterprises with total investment of $18.83 billion yuan. Thirty-seven Macao enterprises have cross-border offices in Hengqin occupying more than 10,000 sq m (2.5 acres) in all.