In the corridors of Western assume tanks and monetary establishments, a acquainted chorus has grown louder: China’s economic system is stumbling, its progress mannequin is exhausted, and its technological ambitions are overreaching. Yet whereas skeptics sharpen their prophecies of doom, one thing consequential is unfolding throughout the Pearl River Delta — a transformation that means the doomsayers could be studying from an outdated script.
The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, comprising the Hong Kong and Macao particular administrative areas, and 9 cities in Guangdong province, is reworking into a house that may see the fifteenth Five-Year Plan (2026-30) come to fruition. What makes this area significantly important shouldn’t be merely its financial heft — a mixed GDP of greater than $2 trillion — however its distinctive strategy to innovation, together with leveraging the “one country, two systems” precept to create “an institutional laboratory” for cross-border technological collaboration.
This strategy represents a elementary shift in China’s idea of innovation. For many years, the narrative centered on China because the world’s manufacturing unit, a manufacturing powerhouse constructed on scale and price benefits. That story, whereas not fully out of date, misses the extra compelling plot unfolding now. The Greater Bay Area is pioneering “new quality productive forces”, which implies innovation-driven, high-value industries starting from synthetic intelligence and quantum computing to biomedicine and superior supplies.
Consider the convergence going down in Shenzhen’s Futian district, the place enterprise capital flows from Hong Kong to satisfy engineering professionals from Chinese mainland tech giants and analysis breakthroughs from universities throughout the border. The first part of the Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone formally entered its operational part in 2025, creating a bodily house the place researchers can transfer between jurisdictions with unprecedented ease.
Scientists can now entry Hong Kong’s worldwide funding streams and mental property rights safety whereas tapping into Shenzhen’s manufacturing ecosystems and huge home market — all inside a quick metro trip.
This institutional innovation issues as a result of it addresses what has lengthy been thought-about China’s Achilles’ heel: the hole between analysis and commercialization, between laboratory breakthroughs and market-ready merchandise. Hong Kong’s Basic Law, its regulatory frameworks aligned with worldwide requirements, and its connections to international capital markets present a bridge that didn’t exist earlier than. Guangdong’s cities, for his or her half, supply one thing equally invaluable: velocity to market, manufacturing sophistication, and a home client base desperate to undertake new applied sciences.
Those writing off China’s technological future ought to pay nearer consideration to what’s occurring within the Greater Bay Area. The subsequent era of breakthroughs in AI, biomedicine and superior manufacturing could nicely emerge from this institutional experiment, not as a result of it’s good, however as a result of it’s pragmatic sufficient to work
The outcomes have gotten tangible. The Greater Bay Area now hosts over 1,500 AI-related enterprises, based on current authorities information. Companies similar to SenseTime, regardless of dealing with US sanctions, have continued growing autonomous automobile applied sciences which are being deployed in robotaxi companies throughout Guangzhou.
The biomedicine sector tells a comparable story. Hong Kong’s InnoHK analysis clusters, launched in 2022, have attracted top-tier scientists from establishments just like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University to collaborate with mainland researchers on all the things from stem cell therapies to novel most cancers remedies. The mannequin is simple: conduct cutting-edge analysis underneath Hong Kong’s internationally acknowledged regulatory setting, then scale scientific trials and manufacturing throughout the border the place affected person populations are bigger and manufacturing prices decrease.
A current instance is the event of CAR-T cell remedy for most cancers therapy, the place Hong Kong-based analysis groups are working with Guangzhou hospitals to speed up scientific functions which may take years longer to navigate by purely Western regulatory pathways.
This cross-border scientific ecosystem instantly challenges the prevailing narrative about China’s technological trajectory. Critics ceaselessly level to the nation’s struggles with unique innovation, its reliance on adapting overseas applied sciences, and its challenges with elementary analysis.
The Greater Bay Area mannequin acknowledges these weaknesses and builds institutional mechanisms to beat them by strategic openness and clever integration of various programs.
This pragmatism extends to expertise recruitment. The Greater Bay Area has launched streamlined visa insurance policies, tax incentives and housing subsidies to draw scientists and engineers from all over the world. Unlike the sooner waves of abroad Chinese returnees, in the present day’s recruits embody non-Chinese researchers drawn by aggressive compensation, entry to funding, and the possibility to work on issues at scale. A local weather scientist from Europe can now run atmospheric fashions utilizing information from China’s increasing satellite tv for pc community and floor sensors throughout the area — analysis that would be logistically unattainable elsewhere.
Of course, challenges stay formidable. Regulatory fragmentation nonetheless creates friction; shifting organic samples between Hong Kong and Shenzhen labs includes bureaucratic hurdles that sluggish analysis. Data flows face restrictions that complicate AI growth. Intellectual property safety, whereas robust in Hong Kong, varies throughout the mainland. And geopolitical tensions create real uncertainties.
Yet dismissing China’s technological potential due to these obstacles is unwise. The Greater Bay Area’s institutional innovation is a artistic response to actual constraints. It’s an acknowledgment that innovation doesn’t require good situations, solely workable options.
The skeptics proclaiming China’s inevitable financial decline typically base their forecasts on demographic developments, debt ranges and slowing productiveness. But they ceaselessly underestimate the adaptive capability of Chinese establishments and their sheer dedication to climb up the worth chain. The fifteenth Five-Year Plan’s emphasis on the Greater Bay Area isn’t merely regional growth coverage; it’s a wager that the mix of scale, velocity, and institutional flexibility can generate innovation at a tempo that compensates for different structural disadvantages.
Those writing off China’s technological future ought to pay nearer consideration to what’s occurring within the Greater Bay Area. The subsequent era of breakthroughs in AI, biomedicine and superior manufacturing could nicely emerge from this institutional experiment, not as a result of it’s good, however as a result of it’s pragmatic sufficient to work.
The writer is the convenor at China Retold, a member of the Legislative Council, and a member of the Central Committee of the New People’s Party.
The views don’t essentially mirror these of China Daily.