Hong Kong has opened a new high-speed rail link to inland China that will vastly decrease travel times but which also raises concerns about Beijing's creeping influence over the semi-autonomous Chinese region.
Costing upward of $US10 billion ($A14 billion) and taking more than eight years to build, the system aims to transport more than 80,000 passengers daily between the Asian financial centre of seven million people and the neighbouring manufacturing hub of Guangdong province.
Passengers will clear Chinese immigration at the line's newly built West Kowloon terminus, the source of major legal controversy when it was revealed that mainland Chinese law would apply within roughly one-quarter of the station's area.
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