[New Thinking Guides a New Journey] Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao Work Together to Accelerate the Building of a World-Class Bay Area

CCTV.com reports (Xinwen Lianbo): Building the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is a major national strategy personally conceived, planned, and advanced by General Secretary Xi Jinping. The general secretary emphasized the need to stay focused on the goal of building a vibrant, internationally competitive, first-class bay area and a world-class city cluster, work together and proceed steadily, and strive for breakthroughs in key areas while making progress across the board. In the opening year of the 15th Five-Year Plan, Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao are taking innovation as their driving force and accelerating the concentration of various factors of production, as the Greater Bay Area continues to take new steps toward integrated development.

The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area accounts for less than 0.6% of China's land area. Just how much innovative energy does it contain?

In half a month, a new material can go from a design drawing to a prototype for mass production; on average, more than 400 invention patents are granted each day; and on average, every two hours, an agreement in principle is reached to commercialize a high-value patent, quickly connecting it with upstream and downstream businesses in the industrial chain.

This transparent film is only one ten-thousandth the thickness of a human hair, yet it is more than 20 times as strong as stainless steel of the same mass. It is a new nanomaterial that a research team at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) succeeded in developing this year. In the four years since the team established itself in Guangzhou, its achievements have been widely applied in new energy, semiconductors, information technology, and medicine.

General Secretary Xi Jinping has always held high hopes for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area as it works together to accelerate its development into a driving force for high-quality development. He pointed out the need to deepen cooperation among Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao, strengthen cooperation in scientific and technological innovation and infrastructure connectivity, and advance the "soft connectivity" of rules and mechanisms. He emphasized the need to make the Greater Bay Area a strategic fulcrum for the new development pattern, a demonstration area for high-quality development, and a leader in Chinese modernization.

This year, the "Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou" innovation cluster retained first place among the world's top 100 innovation clusters, while the "Zhuhai-Macao" innovation cluster made the top 100 for the third consecutive year. How can collaborative innovation unleash fresh vitality? The Greater Bay Area has begun a new round of practical exploration. Recently, the Ministry of Science and Technology and other relevant national ministries, commissions, and central institutions jointly introduced 40 measures to further support the development of the Greater Bay Area as an international science and technology innovation center. Meanwhile, Guangdong, together with Hong Kong and Macao, signed a new round of the Guangdong-Hong Kong university science and technology cooperation program and the Guangdong-Macao jointly funded laboratory program, strengthening original innovation and efforts to achieve breakthroughs in key core technologies.

To date, 35 Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao joint laboratories have begun operating, and a number of major scientific and technological infrastructure facilities, including the China Spallation Neutron Source, have been opened for shared use. Guangdong Province's cumulative cross-border disbursements of research funding to Hong Kong and Macao have exceeded 650 million yuan. Collaborative innovation among Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao is rapidly shifting from version 1.0—"cross-border funding, movement of people, tax balance, and circulation of goods"—to version 2.0, featuring "all-round coordination in projects, platforms, talent, industries, finance, and other areas."

From building a hub of scientific and technological innovation to jointly creating a livable home, and from the "hard connectivity" of infrastructure to the "soft connectivity" of rules and mechanisms, the ties among Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao are becoming ever closer.

Viewed from above the Pearl River Estuary, seven river- and sea-crossing links connect the two sides of the bay area. With more than 3,000 kilometers of railways and 1,686 kilometers of urban rail transit in operation, a "Greater Bay Area on rails" is rapidly taking shape. Cumulative vehicle crossings under the "Northbound Travel for Hong Kong Vehicles," "Northbound Travel for Macao Vehicles," and "Southbound Travel for Guangdong Vehicles" programs have exceeded 10 million. At present, the three places have jointly issued 284 "Greater Bay Area standards," covering 41 fields including logistics, elderly care, and childcare. Hong Kong and Macao residents' participation in medical insurance in Guangdong has reached 430,000 person-times. The "Hong Kong and Macao Medicines and Medical Devices Connect" program now covers more than 70 medical institutions in Guangdong, benefiting nearly 30,000 patient visits.

Bordering the South China Sea and backed by China's vast domestic market, today's Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is rooted in the bay area, serves the entire country, and connects with the world.

This year, development of the four major cooperation zones in Hengqin, Qianhai, Nansha, and Hetao has advanced further. Focusing on talent services, market access for industries, and cross-border flows of factors of production, they are making stronger efforts to explore institutional opening-up. In the first three quarters of this year, Guangdong Province's foreign investment in actual use reached 89.17 billion yuan, up 14.1%, with investment from APEC economies growing by 13.7%. In the first three quarters of this year, imports and exports of the nine mainland cities in the Greater Bay Area totaled 8.42 trillion yuan. Of this, trade with APEC economies reached 5.58 trillion yuan, up 26.7% year on year and a record high for the same period.

Looking ahead, Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao are working together, each drawing on its own strengths, and steadily advancing toward the goal of a world-class bay area.