Swimming with Asian Sharks - Business Secrets from the Pacific Rim

A Private Highway

As Mr. RealEstate was driving us back to Hong Kong from Shenzhen, because Mr. IT lived in Shenzhen, we dropped him off first before proceeding to the border.  At this point I had never gone across the China/Hong Kong border by private car. In fact, I didn't even know that was possible.  Apparently this privilege was reserved for the ultra-rich.  The government issued fewer than 300 of these licenses.  To get the right, you had to prove that you had done a certain amount of business in China. You had to do over 5 million dollars a year RMB in business to get a license in blue, and over 10 million dollars RMB to get a license in black.  Mrs. Philosophy has five black licenses.  Later I found out that it was a new scheme the Hong Kong government was trying. However, it met massive protest, because Hong Kong people didn't want the cars from the mainland blocking traffic and causing air pollution.[1]

When we arrived at the border, the guard instructed us to pop the trunk, and to get our passports ready.  At the border this was around early afternoon and there were about 10 cars.  This was shocking as this was a border crossing with five ports.  It wasn't a Sunday afternoon. I was confused by this situation; on past weekends at the subway or bus border crossings, there were thousands of people.

After the guard was satisfied that we were not smuggling drugs or gold bars, they let us pass.  The highway was deserted; we drove for 20 minutes without seeing another car before arriving in the New Territories.  Mr. RealEstate dropped Mr. Princeton, Mr. Mineral and me off and so that we could have a meeting.  Mr. Princeton usually likes to have a brief after-meeting, to work through our feelings and impressions.  This is very useful for discovering what we did well, and what we could improve on the next time.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_mainland_China_driving_scheme