A car ride from Macau through the Pearl River Delta (PRD) conurbation for a recent three-day Easter holiday trip to Guangzhou has reaffirmed my confidence in the great development potential of the vast Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA), which includes the PRD. 

The GBA marks this year the seventh anniversary of its establishment by the State Council. Since then, it has developed by leaps and bounds. Even the three-year COVID-19 pandemic couldn’t stop its long-term growth momentum. It is now the world’s largest and most populated metro area ahead of New York, Tokyo and San Francisco. In less than a decade it has grown into a megapolis and a startup incubator and economic accelerator.

As numbers speak louder than words, I cite the following GBA statistics: 

Covering 56,000 square kilometres (nearly one-third of the area of Guangdong province) and with its population of about 86 million (slightly larger than Germany’s), the GBA’s GDP reached nearly US$2 trillion last year, around the same as the GDP of G7-member Canada. That’s no mean feat. 

The GBA’s economic output is about the same as Mexico’s and higher than, for example, the GDP of Australia or South Korea. It has reached around 43 percent of the GDP of Germany and about 48 percent of the one of Japan (the world’s number three and four economies, respectively). 

The GBA includes the mega-cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the “world’s factory” Dongguan, seven airports, five mega-bridges (including the world’s longest sea crossing, which links Hong Kong with the west bank of the PRD), an intercity railway system, and the nation’s two special administrative regions – Hong Kong and Macau. 

The GBA’s nine cities in Guangdong – Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen, Huizhou, and Zhaoqing – have populations ranging between over two million (Zhuhai) and more than 18 million (Guangzhou).* 

The development of the GBA is a national-level strategy and a key component of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Based on President Xi Jinping’s people-centred economic development drive, the central authorities released their Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area in February 2019. The aim is to develop the GBA into an economically integrated, innovative, sustainable and eco-friendly world-class business hub. 

My impression is that the plan launched five years ago, notwithstanding the normal bumps in the road as well as all the decoupling, de-risking and overcapacity chatter by certain countries that struggle to compete globally, is coming to fruition. Of course, all economic development strategies need to undergo periodic adjustments. I am confident that all those involved on the national and regional level in getting the GBA development strategy ahead are fully aware of this inevitability. 

The GBA has grown within a comparatively short period of time into one of the world’s top delta economies. 

According to UCI Distinguished Professor Efi Foufoula-Georgiu, there are 10 reasons why deltas are “perfect showcases for a global sustainability effort”**, because, for instance, they “inspire solution-driven, actionable research, require interdisciplinary research for a holistic understanding [and] are a perfect platform to increase awareness in Global Environmental Change (GEC) while teaching the next generation to ‘think globally’.” 

Studies by other researchers have shown that deltas are natural hubs for trade and transportation, facilitate and foster the movement of goods and services, promote economic development and external trade, attract industrial development and, last but not least, often possess unique ecosystems, scenic landscapes and a cultural heritage which attract tourists. Macau springs to mind. 

The PRD, which nowadays makes up a crucial part of the GBA, has been a hub for foreign trade for at least two millennia. According to historians, direct trade routes between the Middle East and Guangdong were thriving in 200 CE and Arab and Persian maritime merchants set up shop in Guangzhou in the 10^th century.*** Portuguese seafarers began to settle in Macau in the mid-16^th century.

Fast-forwarding to the present day, the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR) is nowadays one of the 11 GBA members. It is its smallest member in terms of size (a nanoscopic 33.3 sq. km) and population (683,700 at the end of last year), but the one with the highest population density per sq. km (20,531), one of the top in the word. 

While Macau was, for historical reasons, largely separated from the Chinese mainland for four centuries, it is now progressively integrating itself into the GBA. 

The GBA, I am convinced, is vital to Macau’s long-standing effort to diversify its economy which for decades has been overly dependent on its gaming industry. Diversification is a must for Macau, even as far as its tourism sector is concerned, in order to reach the central authorities’ goal of becoming a World Centre of Tourism and Leisure. The local government appears to be determined to reach that aim in the shortest possible time. 

And Macau needs the GBA to achieve its arduous diversification target. Diversification has become Macau’s holy grail. The GBA as a whole can help Macau reach the target such as by allowing some of its talented human resources to work here and becoming a training hub for vocational and university graduates to cut their teeth and hone their skills. Thereby, the GBA could play an increasingly important role as Macau’s growth diversifier. 

On the other hand, Macau has something unique to offer the GBA (and beyond) – its role as a business service platform, which should also include cultural aspects, between China and the world’s nine Portuguese-speaking countries (PSCs), the latter of which have a population of 290 million, comprising Angola, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Equatorial-Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Timor-Leste. 

Macau can, quite naturally, act as the GBA’s interface for its commercial, economic and cultural ties with the Lusophone world, as well as the European Union and Southeast Asia. 

The Macau-based Forum for Economic and Trade Cooperation between China and PSCs (Forum Macau) held its 6^th Ministerial Conference last month. The 10 participating nations vowed to further strengthen their sustainable, innovative and environmentally-friendly cooperation, based on the international relations principles of mutuality and amity. 

The MSAR’s legal and judicial systems are similar to the ones in the PSCs, an advantage that businesspeople from the nine countries do certainly appreciate. Macau’s approach towards its role as an interface between the GBA and the PSCs should be two-fold – assisting businesses from the PSCs to do business and invest in the GBA, and rendering the same kind of assistance to enterprises from the GBA eager to enter the PSC markets.

Macau is also an interface between the GBA and the 27-nation EU, considering that, unlike Hong Kong, its relations with Brussels are based on a trade and cooperation agreement inked back in 1994, which includes their EU-Macau Joint Committee. The MSAR – officially termed “Macau, China” at international conferences – is also an associate member of the Bangkok-based United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), which could be useful in promoting socio-economic understanding and cooperation between the GBA and ESCAP whose 53 members and nine associate members include China and the Hong Kong SAR. 

Macau’s involvement in the GBA has been further intensified by the setting-up of the Guangdong-Macau In-depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin in September 2021. Among its various objectives, the 106-square-kilometre zone also aims to assist Macau in its economic diversification drive. 

Obviously, the GBA-MSAR relationship is based on the concept of ideal reciprocity, i.e., each side is supposed to offer the other one the best of what it has on offer. The 11 GBA members should always pursue the aim of ensuring mutual benefit that, ultimately, is advantageous to the whole country and its foreign partners as well, firmly grounded on President Xi’s vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity and an open, inclusive and interconnected world for common development. 

Through its GBA membership Macau can play its – admittedly small – role in promoting mutual prosperity both regionally and across the globe, as well as international development. As a GBA member, Macau can act as the 11-city conurbation’s international interface and avail itself of the latter’s role as a diversifier in assisting in Macau’s economic diversification effort which, I have no doubt, will still take some time to bear fruit. 

– Harald Brüning 

* https://research.hktdc.com/en/article/MzYzMDE5NzQ5

** https://efi.eng.uci.edu/papers/efg_136.pdf

***https://hal.univ-reunion.fr/hal-03249784v1/document