THE Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is emerging as a world-class city cluster, and the advanced manufacturing and modern service industries are the primary drivers of the Greater Bay Area’s growth, according to a recent report.

The plan and construction of the area will offer huge opportunities for Shenzhen, said the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Construction Report 2018, which was jointly released by several organizations including Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences, Hong Kong’s Minghui Think Tank and Zijing magazine.

The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is the fourth-largest bay area in the world after Tokyo, New York and San Francisco, and is attracting large inflows of international investment, the report says.

Although the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area accounts for only 0.6 percent of China’s land mass, it yields 13 percent of the country’s total GDP. The area serves as China’s leader in technological innovation and industrial upgrade, and leads the country in terms of talent, capital and industry densities, according to the report.

The sea, land and air transport network in the Greater Bay Area, as well as the foreign trade docks and industries distributed in the cities will enable the area to become a very open, innovation-driven, livable and coordinated bay area. A first-class city cluster and international free trade port is taking shape here, the report says.

The report calls for the Greater Bay Area to develop and congregate industries towards the goals of becoming an international shipping center, logistics center, trade and financial center,  and national innovation center. It also suggests that a leadership team  headed by a Central Government leader be set up to coordinate the policies of different cities in the area.

The report says the planning and construction of the Greater Bay Area presents great opportunities for Shenzhen, which “has a say” in the world markets in bio-engineering, artificial intelligence, mobile Internet, the Internet of Things and other fields. The city, formerly a processing base, has given birth to a large number of leading enterprises in some industries and is becoming a capital of innovation, according to the report.

To become a global bellwether in technological innovation, Shenzhen must attract global innovation resources to concentrate in the city to maintain the continuous growth of its international competitiveness.

Media reports have said the Central Government will release the general plan of the Greater Bay Area in the first half of this year.

The blueprint for the Greater Bay Area is part of the national development strategy put forward in the Government Work Report by Premier Li Keqiang in March last year.

The strategy is to develop the 11 cities in the Greater Pearl River Delta — namely Hong Kong, Macao, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Zhongshan, Dongguan, Huizhou, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing — into an integrated economic and business hub.   (SD News)