Can China’s Greater Bay Area really rival the likes of Tokyo, New York and San Francisco?
- It covers a geographical area equivalent to the land mass of Croatia and is the largest of the four metropolitan areas
- At US$1.8 trillion in 2017, the GDP of the Greater Tokyo Area is largest among the four regions
About fours years after China’s top economic planners coined the term “Greater Bay Area”, details about the initiative were finally be unveiled on Monday. First mentioned in a 2015 blueprint of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, the term has become a buzzword among business communities in southern China and beyond.
The initiative aims to connect the former European colonies of Hong Kong and Macau with nine cities in China’s southern Guangdong province. Officials from the three jurisdictions signed a framework agreement in 2017, vowing to achieve goals such as greater economic integration and more robust innovation through the initiative.
Beijing has stressed that the region covered by the Greater Bay Area initiative has the potential to grow into one of the most important metropolitan areas in the world, rivalling city clusters formed around San Francisco, New York and Tokyo.
Here is how the Greater Bay Area compares with these three regions:
Greater Bay Area
Comprising nine cities in mainland China and the two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, it is the largest cluster among the four.