Future Opportunities in the Great Bay Area

Jun 04, 2021

With its huge population and economy size, the GBA is targeted to be one of the most prosperous bay areas in the world.

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.

3. Booming education sector empowered by co-operation between HK and mainland cities in GBA.

The Greater Bay Area plan will encourage collaborative research between universities and other academic or research institutions in Hong Kong and mainland China. Especially for Hong Kong, its world-class universities and centres of research will take the leading role to boost the technology innovation in the Great Bay Area. Just like Stanford University at the heart of Silicon Valley, Hong Kong universities can become the research engine for Shenzhen’s development as the new technology centre in Asia. Government funding and collaboration programs will be increased to boost the higher education sector in the Greater Bay Area. Mainland Chinese students and researchers in GBA will have more opportunities to study or collaborate with their counterparts in Hong Kong. This will help Hong Kong become the top tier R&D centre in Asia and in return to fuel the development of technology innovation and education sector in GBA.

4. Cross border trade opportunity with future Free Tax Zone benefits

There’re two tax and custom systems in the Greater Bay Area. Both Hong Kong and Macau are basically tax-free ports applying customs duties only on a very limited range of goods while other cities in mainland China has a general VAT system. GBA Free Trade Zone can help to remove trade barriers caused by customs system and make the movement of goods and services within the GBA region more easily and efficiently. This will definitely attract more cross border business being operated in the Greater Bay Area and stimulate the trade transaction in this region.

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