Explainer | What is Guangzhou’s role in the Greater Bay Area master plan?
- Guangzhou has launched expansion plans for its aviation and railway network, part of its push to become a global transport hub
- Bay area blueprint encourages city to improve modern financial services regime
Guangzhou, the provincial capital of the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, has been identified as a core engine for regional development in the master plan of the Greater Bay Area (GBA), the cluster of 11 cities including Hong Kong and Macau.
It is the most populous city, with 15 million residents. Guangzhou’s gross domestic product grew 6.8 per cent to 2.36 trillion yuan (US$364.4 billion) in 2019, the third largest in the bay area after Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Its output exceeded those of Denmark, South Africa and Malaysia, according to World Bank data.
In the first nine months of 2020, the city’s economy further expanded by 1 per cent, while Shenzhen’s rose 2.6 per cent and Hong Kong’s GDP slumped 5.9 per cent, according to official statistics.
Guangzhou focuses on advanced manufacturing, with cars, electronics and petrochemicals as its three pillar industries. It is home to major Chinese carmaker Guangzhou Automobile Group, as well as tech giant NetEase Inc.
Whereas Hong Kong’s economic prosperity can be traced to the 1950s, Guangzhou has served as an important foreign trade port in China for more than 2,000 years. Known as the “millennium capital of business,” the historic port on the old maritime Silk Road was once famed for its Chinese tea, silk and ceramics.
The biannual Canton Fair, China’s oldest trade expo held in Guangzhou every spring and autumn since 1957, is a popular bookmark in global trade event calendars. The expo is the largest of its kind in China in terms of scale, variety, distribution of overseas buyers and business turnover.
Global transport hub
The airport aims to carry 120 million passengers annually by 2030 and 140 million by 2045. It recorded 73.38 million of them in 2019.
International commerce centre
The bay area blueprint also prods Guangzhou to further improve its modern financial services regimes, develop a regional private equity trading market, and establish a regional centre for equity and commodity trading.
In September, the Guangzhou city government passed an action plan for the implementation of financial measures to support the development of the bay area. The plan called for the launch of major financial projects and platforms, promoting cross-border trade and investment, financing facilitation and widening access to its financial markets.
New futures exchange for carbon emissions
The China Securities Regulatory Commission, the nation’s top securities watchdog, formed a working group in October to launch a futures exchange for the trading of carbon-emission credits in Guangzhou.
Last week, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment released the trial rules for a national carbon emissions trading scheme, which would take effect in February.
Promoting culinary culture
The bay area blueprint also called on Guangzhou to promote its unique culinary culture, part of efforts to develop a global culinary capital.
Guangzhou has a reputation as one of the country’s food capitals, and is most famous for Cantonese cuisine. As a trading port, Guangzhou had access to many imported foods, spices and ingredients, resulting in the wide variety of dishes.
Guangzhou’s famous dishes include roasted goose, rice noodle rolls, wonton noodles and beef entrails.
Going to restaurants for yum cha or “drinking tea” and eating dim sum – bite-sized portions of food ranging from steamed shrimp dumplings to chicken feet – is one of the residents’ favourite pastimes, and an important part of the city’s history and culture.
