(Bloomberg) — Hong Kong’s financial regulator issued rules on quarantine-free travel to the Chinese mainland, laying out some of the first details in the plan to re-open the border.
Those eligible to pre-register are staff or directors of a licensed corporation who have regional roles and whose main purpose is to travel to Guangdong province to manage mainland business, the Securities and Futures Commission said Monday on the first phase of the plan. Each company may may submit one pre-registration, comprising of a maximum of two executives in each calendar month.
Both Hong Kong and China are preparing to resume quarantine-free travel, with city Chief Executive Carrie Lam prioritizing restarting travel with the mainland over opening up to the rest of the world. That goal has seen Hong Kong adopt Beijing’s stringent zero-Covid policy to keep infections out of the financial hub.
Hong Kong launched a China-style health code on Dec. 10, putting the city’s tracking capabilities on par with the mainland. The voluntary app is designed to be compatible with systems in neighboring Macau and Guangdong province in southern China and will record a user’s real name, address and identification number.
Under the SFC plan, a successful registration will allow the sponsored executive to then apply for quarantine-free travel to Guangdong province. The pre-registrations via the SFC won’t guarantee quarantine-free travel as that’s subject to a daily quota administered by another government agency. The SFC will begin accepting pre-registrations with a Dec. 17 deadline.
When the border reopens, travel may initially be capped at 1,000 people per day, local news outlet HK01 reported last month, citing unidentified sources.
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