5 years on, a surging Greater Bay Area is driving China’s economic growth
- Policies to strengthen the region’s development have turned the GBA into a hub for scientific, technological and industrial innovation and growth, and a lesson in high-quality development, writes Hu Nan
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Five years ago, the the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA) Development Plan was unveiled. By leveraging the strengths of nine cities and two special administrative regions in south China, the GBA was widely considered a front runner in the nation opening its economy to the broader world.
In 2023, the total economic output of the GBA was estimated to exceed 13.6 trillion yuan, an increase of about 3.8 trillion yuan from 2018. With less than 1 per cent of the country’s land area and 6 per cent of the total population, it generated 11 per cent of its GDP. Over the years, China’s contribution to world economic growth has been around 30 per cent. This means that the GBA has played a significant role in the global economy.
One-hour living circle
Targeted for development as an integrated economic and business hub, the GBA is home to nine cities in Guangdong province, as well as the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. The cities have different roles in the GBA, and their unique strengths form a strategic stronghold for the new development pattern.
Many infrastructure projects have been completed to facilitate travel and communication between all the cities, including the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HZMB), which is the longest sea-crossing bridge in the world, the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link (XRL), and the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link, which will reduce the travel time between Shenzhen and Zhongshan.
More than 16.3 million inbound and outbound passengers, and 3.26 million vehicles, passed through the HZMB’s Zhuhai port in 2023, 1.29 times and 3.8 times more than 2019, respectively. In 2023, the highest single-day passenger flow via the bridge reached 115,000.
For the XRL, statistics show that in 2023, the railway transported 10.856 million passengers from the Chinese mainland to Hong Kong and 10.413 million passengers from Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland.
