April 9, 2024
SHENZHEN – The total economic output of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) hit 14 trillion yuan ($1.97 trillion) in 2023, accounting for one-ninth of the nation’s overall GDP, according to the Guangdong Provincial Office of the Leading Group for the Development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
Zhu Wei, executive deputy director of the GBA office in Guangdong, said the area witnessed an increase of 3.2 trillion yuan in GDP since 2018. He highlighted in particular the progress it has made in technology innovation, intercity transportation, demonstration zones of cooperation, and market integration.
The GBA is home to more than 75,000 national high-tech enterprises and a batch of leading technology companies, such as Huawei, Tencent, and BYD. It also built and is still building several national- and provincial-level laboratories, such as Pengcheng Laboratory and Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory.
The Global Innovation Index (GII) by the World Intellectual Property Organization ranked the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou science and technology cluster second in 2023 for the fourth consecutive year.
Since the launch of the Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in 2019, the transportation network has also been improved. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge linked up the two SARs with Guangdong in 2018, while more rail facilities were put into operation among cities within Guangdong in recent years.
Data released by the Zhuhai port of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge show it handled 19,570 vehicles on April 6, achieving a new peak in daily vehicle traffic for the third time in seven days, indicating increasing exchanges across the border.
Moreover, the annual passenger throughput of the GBA airport cluster has exceeded 280 million, and the capacity of its port cluster has reached over 85 million TEU per year.
As to the development of key cooperation pilot zones, the Guangdong-Macao In-Depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin stood out recently as it officially started closed-loop operation on March 1 — an innovative measure to facilitate the efficient and convenient flow of people and logistics between Macao and Hengqin.