Greater Bay Area: a new bridge, west of Guangdong
The Huangmao Sea Channel Bridge opened to traffic yesterday, an ideal infrastructure that links up with the majestic bridge that connects Hong Kong, Zhuhai and Macau. This is a further step to the creation of a metropolitan area of 70 million people that China wants to turn into an economic engine on a par with Tokyo and New York.
Macau (AsiaNews/Agencies) – The development of the Greater Bay Area (GBA), the large basin of the Pearl River Delta, is moving west of Guangdong. Beijing wants to turn it into a single large metropolitan area that will include Shenzhen and Guangzhou as well as the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
Yesterday, the Huangmao Sea Channel Bridge (HSCB) was opened to traffic, facilitating connections between two other cities in the Greater Bay Area, Zhuhai and Jiangmen.
The new crossing is much more than a simple bridge: running along 31 kilometres, it is a motorway corridor between the bridge over sea and land.
It is the third most important infrastructure, next to the majestic 55-kilometre Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HKZMB) that includes a tunnel section, and the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link.
By completing the HKZMB (inaugurated in 2018) westwards, the HSCB is designed to bring the area west of Guangdong closer to the eastern areas of the Pearl River Delta.
The new route halves travel time between Jiangmen and Zhuhai from over an hour to 30 minutes, while the duration of the journey between Jiangmen and Hong Kong is cut to about 90 minutes.
The new bridge, whose construction began on 6 June 2020, has a standard two-way, six-lane highway structure with a designed speed of 100 kilometres per hour.
The debut of the Huangmaohai Cross-sea Passage follows the opening of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link in June, which reduces travel times between the two cities from at least two hours to as little as 25 minutes.
Taken together, these three mega steps, accompanied by regulations allowing vehicles from Hong Kong and Macau to travel to the mainland, are part of a plan to boost connectivity within the bay area.
With a population of about 70 million, the GBA is an initiative by China’s central government to integrate Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities in Guangdong province into a single economic engine capable of rivalling regions like Tokyo, New York and San Francisco.
In 2023, the GBA's combined GDP exceeded 14 trillion yuan (US$ 1.9 trillion).
This important area, which covers less than 0.6 per cent of China’s territory with 6 per cent of its total population, generates 11 per cent of the country’s GDP.
In Chinese President Xi Jinping's plans, it is now the key engine in the country's development and is set to become more and more a world-class city cluster.
Xi himself is expected to visit Macau on 20 December to mark the 25th anniversary of the return to China of the former Portuguese colony.
This will provide him with another opportunity to celebrate the prospects of the Greater Bay Area and the increasingly close connections between the special autonomous regions (Hong Kong and Macau) and the southern province of Guangdong.
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05/06/2023 16:21
