The State Council has recently issued the Reply on Approving Revoking the Management Line of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (the "Reply").
The Reply states that with a view to promoting the integrated development of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, the central government agrees to remove the management line of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, taking in account of the new trend, missions and tasks of the special zone's construction and development. Also, the Reply requires the People's Government of Guangdong Province and the People's Government of Shenzhen Municipality to work effectively on the removal of the special economic zone's borders and take opportunity of this removal to carry out the unified management of urban and rural development and planning across the entire Shenzhen municipality, optimize the layout of urban functions, improve transportation infrastructure, facilitate the intensive and economical use of land, intensify environmental protection and ecological construction, enhance supplies of public products and services in an orderly manner and achieve urbanization of better quality. Moreover, the Reply underscores the need to further strengthen boundary administration between Hong Kong and Guangdong and intensify the infrastructure construction, after the management line has been removed, in order to ensure the constant stability at the boundary between Hong Kong and Guangdong.