Economic significance of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area

According to the recently launched “Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area,” the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is one of the most open and economically vibrant regions of China and plays a profound strategic role in the overall development of the country. Using innovation as its base, the development of the Greater Bay Area not only attempts to break ground in a new era but also takes a further step in advancement of the practice of “one country, two systems”.

The Greater Bay Area covers a total area of 56,000 square kilometers and by the end of 2017, it had a combined population of approximately 70 million. Its gross domestic product amounted to about 10 trillion yuan (1.48 trillion US dollars) in 2017, indicating that the Greater Bay Area is not only a vast urban agglomeration to China, but also to the world. HSBC predicts that by 2025, the GDP of the Greater Bay Area will increase to 2.8 trillion US dollars. Many experts anticipate great things in the future development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

The outline suggests that the Greater Bay Area plays a dominantly influential role as the leader and the nine municipalities of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) act as the supporting hinterland, “driving the development of central and southwestern regions, and influencing the important supportive economic belts of Southeast and South Asia.”

Experts suggest the Greater Bay Area can follow in the example of other global bay areas such as the Tokyo Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area, and New York Bay Area in infrastructure construction. Additionally, it is more important to learn how all of these bay areas can overcome the constraints of administrative division and allow enterprises and society to play a leading role in the integration of resources.

All of these reasons contribute to the consequential 2019 Global Bay Areas Cooperation and Development Forum.

The blue ocean of opportunity in the San Francisco Bay Area

The outline development plan notes that ever since the reform and opening-up of China, especially the return of Hong Kong and Macao to the motherland, cooperation among Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao has continuously deepened and become more concrete. The Greater Bay Area has experienced a marked increase in its economic strength and regional competitiveness, and already possesses the fundamental conditions for developing into a world-class bay area and city cluster.

Official media in the Tokyo Bay Area revealed that the planning of the Greater Bay Area involves 11 cities including Guangzhou and Shenzhen in Guangdong Province, as well as Hong Kong and Macao. The region’s population accounts for only five percent of China's total population, but the GDP accounts for 12 percent of China’s overall GDP. Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, and Dongguan are notable contributors to these statistics of economic strength.

US financial experts believe that the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge in the Lingdingyang waters of south China is "one of China's efforts to develop the Greater Bay Area," as it connects Hong Kong, Macao and the southern part of the mainland, creating a technological hub comparable to the San Francisco Bay Area.

Xing Ziqiang, Chief Economist at Morgan Stanley China, argues that the gradual formation of China's five major urban agglomerations (the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the Yangtze River Delta region, the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, Chengdu-Chongqing region, Beijing–Tianjin-Hebei region) will help to support productivity growth. Meanwhile, the Greater Bay Area possesses the natural advantages of an economic bridgehead.

Indeed, the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is comparable to the world's three most famous Bay Areas: The New York Bay Area, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Tokyo Bay Area. The latest released "Big Bay Area Impact Report (2018): New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao" shows that the economic influence of the Greater Bay Area ranks first among the four, and third for overall impact index, higher than the ranking of the Tokyo Bay Area.

The importance of the Global Bay Areas Forum is self-evident

The Greater Bay Area is also facing unprecedented challenges, from breaking through institutional barriers to integrating regional resources to strengthening cultural identity. Only from challenges can innovation sprout, and innovation is the soul of economic development in these global bay areas. The upcoming forum will converge the wisdom of top experts among world bay areas, providing an excellent opportunity for the up-and-coming “rookie” Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to learn from the “class prodigies”.

While the wave of globalization meets emerging trends in regional development, the global bay areas are now facing a new historical era of development. It has become an urgent and pressing issue for the global bay areas to collaborate and seek a solution, utilizing innovation, dialogue, and cooperative development to advance to the next economic level. As a top notch summit forum gathering talents from global bay areas, the Global Bay Areas Cooperation and Development Forum aims to build a world-class economic cooperation platform, laying a solid foundation for the coordinated development and mutual benefit of the bay areas in the future.

The forum will also introduce a cooperation mechanism by establishing the Global Bay Areas Cooperation Council (GBACC). The Council builds a platform for the exchange of resources among the global bay areas, thus creating a robust and dynamic globally linked economic system in which complementary competition leads to synergistic development.

The council members will come from renowned bay areas such as New York, San Francisco, London, Sydney, Tokyo, and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. They hail from authorities, think tanks, for-profit and non-profit organizations, universities, research centers, illustrious enterprises, innovative start-ups, technology innovation incubators, and more.

Through collaborative organization, the Council provides members with all-round services for the exchange of information, talents, technology, and capital. By gathering resources from the global bay areas, GBACC helps members expand their businesses globally while simultaneously comprehending and complying with relevant local policies and regulations. GBACC organizes various activities for members to share information and resources with the purpose of promoting business partnerships in specific industries. The Council also encourages members to seek transnational cooperation and collaboration by legal means.

Let us gather at this global forum in San Francisco at the end of March to look forward to the bright and brilliant future of the global bay areas.