China’s Hainan announces airport upgrade, tunnel plan to enhance transport links with the Greater Bay Area
- Authorities hope to create an ‘outer island circle’ to enable travel between Hainan and the Greater Bay Area within one and a half hours
- The draft plan proposes a new sea crossing between Hainan and Guangdong province, an airport upgrade and high-speed railway
China’s southernmost island province of Hainan has issued a draft plan to strengthen transport links with the Greater Bay Area, aimed at turning the nascent free-trade port into a transport hub for the south of the country.
Fixing its transport connections with the Greater Bay Area, an economic powerhouse encompassing nine cities in Guangdong province, plus Hong Kong and Macau, is likely to be critical to its success.
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The draft transport plan, which was issued by the provincial government in Haikou last week, has proposed developing the Haikou Meilan International Airport into a global aviation hub covering the Pacific and Indian Oceans, with a target of 60 million passengers per year by 2035 and 100 million by 2050.
In addition, the document outlines a vision for the “Qiongzhou Strait Crossing Project”, which would see construction of a bridge or undersea tunnel between the island and southwest tip of Guangdong province that could support a high-speed railway and highway network.
The Qiongzhou Strait, which separates Hainan from the Leizhou Peninsula in Guangdong province, is on average 30km wide and 19.4km at its narrowest. At present, the journey across it can take several hours by sea or air.
Proposals and feasibility studies for a new connection have been discussed since the early 1990s, but none have come to fruition due to the difficulty and cost of construction, including concerns about the area’s susceptibility to earthquakes and high seas.
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A cross-sea passage project was included in the 12th five-year plan for 2011-15, though no work materialised.
Qi Bang Shen, associate researcher at the Institute of Geomechanics under the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, said the Qiongzhou Strait is located in a seismic zone where earthquakes tend to focus, which has affected construction safety.
“Not only for this cross-sea bridge but from a geoengineering point of view, two factors, seismic activity faults and ground vibrations, can affect the safety of all projects,” Qi said.
The risk of building in seismic zones is that sudden earthquakes could lead to sliding or even rupturing of subsea geology, which would directly affect infrastructure built on the surface, he said.
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Wu said a tunnel proposed by his think tank could shorten travel time to Hainan to about 10 minutes by high-speed rail.
A crossing would facilitate the movement of people and cargo, attracting businesses and talent to the island, which could serve as “the front line for China to deeply integrate into the global economic landscape”, Wu said.
RCEP involves about 15 countries, including 10 from Southeast Asia, and covers nearly a third of the global population and about 30 per cent of its global gross domestic product.
