Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Wednesday the city was at a new starting point for development under a national security law imposed last year and her priority is to focus on tackling a long-standing housing shortage in the Chinese-ruled city.
Authorities in Hong Kong and Beijing have long blamed unaffordable housing in the former British colony for deep-rooted social problems that they say helped fuel anti-government protests in 2019.
At the center of plans unveiled by Lam in her last policy address in this term of office was a new city in northern Hong Kong, on the border with the mainland's technology hub of Shenzhen, covering 300 square kilometers with ultimately up to 926,000 residential units for some 2.5 million people.