China’s Greater Bay Area: The World’s Stage

China’s Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, known as the Greater Bay Area or GBA for short, has been attracting entrepreneurs, scientists, social and civil engineers, and venture capitalists from across the country and even the world since the release of the GBA development plan two years ago.

This area is remembered both for becoming partially under British and Portuguese colonial rule in the past and as a torchbearer in pioneering China’s reform and opening-up of the past four decades. The famous Southern Tour of the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping drew tight focus to the area in early 1992 when he visited cities in Guangdong. Shenzhen, originally a small fishing village, has grown into a modern city with an economy bigger than Hong Kong. It is now nicknamed China’s Silicon Valley and hosts world-class Chinese tech companies such as Huawei, Tencent, and DJI.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s 2012 Southern Tour followed Deng Xiaoping’s footsteps with stops in the four cities of Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, and Guangzhou in Guangdong Province. Xi’s Southern Tour served as a prelude to a new shift in China’s reform and opening up that birthed the idea of the GBA. Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area was unveiled in February 2019 as the U.S. was beginning to decouple from China for fear of China’s rise and eventual overtaking and also when Industry 4.0 was reaching a new height of development. Industry 4.0 has driven a technological synthesis of the internet of things, AI, and blockchains, creating the power to forge deeper integration of all information, all things, and all peoples and cultures. All these factors were technically conducive to construction of the Greater Bay Area.

Big challenges remain to reach the goals of the development plan, such as integrating all these areas into a single fully functioning common market, and creating a new model of modernization for other regions of China to follow.

The three regions also contrast with major differences including the socialist system adopted by Guangdong Province and the capitalist one adopted by Hong Kong and Macao. Three separate customs regimes and three currencies, RMB, Hong Kong dollar, and Macanese pataca, still work together. Each of these three regions uses a distinct legal system. Such factors hinder the smooth integration of all the three regions into a single common market. Overcoming such differences would demand extraordinary wisdom and talent and take time and money.

Few global bay areas could be found to serve as a model for this project. New York Bay Area on the East Coast of the U.S. began thriving with the first wave of industrialization and later embraced the financial industry. The San Francisco Bay Area on the West Coast of the U.S.  boomed by inventing the third industrialization—the internet. The Tokyo Bay Area in Japan prospered through a localized hybrid of the various waves of industrialization in Western countries like Germany, the UK, and the U.S.

GBA’s economic development patterns have not yet escaped the basic formula of developed economies such as European countries, the U.S., Japan, and Singapore and their definitions of modernization. In the current era, however, continuing to emulate other models is hardly sustainable, especially as they start to run out of steam. This means that the development of China’s GBA must be original in terms of both institutional and technological innovation. This presents quite a challenge if the world’s most technologically advanced country, the U.S., is decoupling from China and attempting to stop the nation’s peaceful rise. 

 Despite such obstacles, the future of China’s GBA still looks bright for three key reasons: First, GBA’s development plan was built on a morally superior philosophy and a sound vision for the future. Both the New York Bay Area development model embodied by Wall Street and the San Francisco Bay Area development model embodied by Silicon Valley are based on libertarian or neoliberal vision of globalization, which privileges capitalists’ interest and undermines the legitimate interests of common people and the legitimate functions of the nation-state. Even if they have been financially prosperous, these models must be held accountable for drastic economic inequality both in the U.S. and the world. They have essentially driven the American model of globalization to the end of its track, where it is now stuck in a corner with little room to reinvent any wheels. The Tokyo Bay Area development model was rooted in Japan’s desire to achieve wealth and power in Asia and display successes globally. It is mostly a nationalist model which has been losing its luster and gathering dust.

It would be wise for China’s GBA development model to avoid its predecessors’ pitfalls while adopting some of the strong points of these models such as mechanisms for innovation and management styles. China’s GBA has embraced the philosophy of inclusion and equity and seeks progress towards the vision of building a global community of shared future while at the same time serving for the country’s goals of achieving basic socialist modernization by 2035 and becoming a great modern socialist country by 2050. With this strategic chart in mind, instrumental values such as critical thinking, innovation and creativity, competitiveness, and cooperativeness in individuals, groups, and institutions should be cultivated and rewarded to foster a more progressive and humane development model for China’s GBA. Development of the GBA is motivated by a morally superior philosophy, a careful vision, and strong support from the Chinese central government.

Second, all the areas in the GBA are blessed with a shared cultural identity—the Lingnan culture and shared values of authenticity, open-mindedness, tolerance, and appreciation for diversity. GBA has been one of the hottest destinations for migrants from China, Asia, and other parts of the world. Of all the regions in China, Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao are home to the most descendants of people from other parts of China. Shenzhen, for example, is a living contemporary mecca for immigrants, which has nurtured an environment full of vitality and conducive to creativity and innovation.  

Third, China’s GBA is witnessing a rising cluster of higher education institutions. It is home to about 100 institutions of higher education. Many are world-class or top Asian universities such as the University of Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, Shenzhen University, and University of Macau. These schools have been educating thousands of highly talented youths to meet the labor demands of the GBA while also acting as a GBA network for research labs and incubators of new ideas, patents, and products. Even though development of the GBA still faces challenges, it enjoys great potential thanks to various favorable conditions.

While prioritizing hard and soft infrastructure integration of the three parties, aligning the development plan with other China’s initiatives such as Yangtze River Delta Development Plan, the Yellow River Belt Project, the Belt and Road Initiative would be conducive to building an Asian community and even the global community of shared future. The Greater Bay Area is a great theater begging for a greater new play.

The author is a professor of communication and global studies, Chapman University.