China’s Greater Bay Area development plan is an ambitious long-term plan. With its huge population and economy size, the GBA is targeted to be one of the most prosperous bay areas in the world. But lots of people might ask if this means real opportunities to business and further question if it can truly achieve its goals to compete with Silicon Valley and other bay areas in the future. Here we listed four aspects of advantages of the GBA and the future opportunities related to them.
Diversity of industry sectors encourages cross-integration
Unlike Silicon Valley, which is focused on information technology and innovation, the Greater New York area, which is dominated by the advanced financial service sector, or Tokyo Bay Area, consisting of strong manufacturing industries, the Greater Bay Area has a more diversified industry sector covering IT innovation (based in Shenzhen), financial services hub in Hong Kong, global tourism and entertainment centre in Macau and manufacture basement in Guangzhou and nearby cities in GBA.
The diversity of industry sectors in the Greater Bay Area will undoubtedly help foster deep and frequent cross-integration within the area, giving opportunities to develop new technologies, new products, attracting the best talents coming to the Greater Bay Area, which in return will help the GBA to establish advantages in the new emerging industries like AI, big data management in the future.
Hongkong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge
2. Quality living circle supported by new transport infrastructure
One of the GBA plan’s goals in to create a “quality living circle” in the region. This objective to provide an ideal place for living, working and traveling is an opportunity to develop new lifestyle facilities around sports and recreation, arts and culture, tourism and hospitality. To make this possible, the GBA will have ongoing plans to expand its transport and logistics network for better connectivity and the flow of goods, people and resource between cities. New express rail link between Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong, Hongkong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge and the intercity railway between Guangzhou, Zhongshan, Zhuhai and Macau will make travel in the whole GBA region more freely.
This will lead to population flow to enhance the liveability of the region. For example, young professionals working in Hong Kong can now live in Shenzhen or Zhuhai with the new convenient transport infrastructure. They can enjoy HK’s working opportunity and shopping choices without worrying about the high rent or housing price in HK.