Can the Greater Bay Area lure foreign investors? Beijing wants Hong Kong to draw international capital into region, but global firms still hazy about benefits
- Capital has been flowing into the bay area, but questions linger about its appeal to investors
- Geopolitics, tensions between the West and China have affected the bay area’s ability to perform better
February 18 marks five years since Beijing unveiled its blueprint to turn the Greater Bay Area into a hi-tech powerhouse by 2035. The region of more than 86 million people covers Hong Kong, Macau and nine Guangdong cities.
British architect Peter Brannan has a vivid memory of the first time he visited mainland China in 2000 on behalf of a Hong Kong client, 12 years after moving to the city.
“I always remember standing at the Guangzhou East Station and noticing the different types of Chinese people. You had people from the very north, you had Muslim Chinese, all sorts of different people,” he said.
Those were the early days of a boom in major construction and infrastructure projects that have transformed the cities across southern Guangdong province.
“Since 2000, there’s just been a huge, tremendous expansion of new buildings, new cities, new towns, new transport,” said Brannan, now a senior executive with US architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), which has its regional headquarters in Hong Kong.
