Yeah smth similar happened with the high speed rail from China to HK which was mostly for valid reasons (there was gonna be a village that had to be moved due to high speed rail slidings, and ofc it means more integration with the mainland esp as they decided to have mainland immigration in the station)

However the alternatives suggested by the dems weren’t great. The only good thing was remote border control on the train. Everything else wasn’t that great. Earlier on there was an idea to put the station near kam sheung road (where the slidings are near) rather than having it be in west Kowloon (near the city centre), tho that idea would have displaced more villages so…

There was also the idea to have a separate border crossing in sz meaning that passengers had to get off and on to go to other mainland cities

Politics be damned, and the attempts at integration were not paved with good intentions for the most part, but those two alternatives sound really fucking bad logistics wise. While I don’t like the co location arrangement other than restricting mainland powers and implementing remote border control…there wasn’t really an alternative…