Greater Bay Area eyes global sci-tech innovation hub

The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) is dashing up its push to change into a world-class heart for science and know-how, pushed by innovation elements throughout the area and deepened cooperation.

In a congratulatory letter to the Greater Bay Science Forum 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping, additionally basic secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, urged the GBA to concentrate on its strategic positioning of constructing a global sci-tech innovation hub, try to make itself a global highland for sci-tech innovation, and foster the event of rising industries.

Now the Greater Bay Area has turned that imaginative and prescient into actuality with sooner collaboration and achieved exceptional outcomes. On common, each two hours, a high-value patent within the GBA might attain a commercialization intent and is shortly matched with upstream and downstream companions within the industrial chain.

Connectivity between main science zones within the space can be accelerating. It now takes about half-hour for researchers in Hong Kong to commute on to the Shenzhen Park of Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone in Guangdong. Relying on the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Macao science and know-how innovation hall, joint analysis and improvement tasks within the space have elevated by 40 %.

Now a mean of greater than 400 invention patents are licensed each day within the GBA. This yr, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou innovation cluster has topped the world’s 100 main innovation clusters within the 2025 Global Innovation Index for the primary time.

In December 2012, Xi visited Guangdong in his first inspection journey outdoors Beijing after the 18th CPC National Congress. He expressed the hope for Guangdong to accomplice with Hong Kong and Macao to create a extra aggressive world-class metropolis cluster, setting the strategic cornerstone for the event of the GBA.

Since then, at any time when Xi pays an inspection tour to both Guangdong, Hong Kong or Macao, he’ll go to the frontlines of innovation.

In the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), he urged town to affix palms with mainland cities of the GBA, transfer towards one another, and strengthen collaboration amongst industries, universities, and analysis institutes.

In Macao, he known as on the SAR to proactively take part in GBA improvement, combine high-quality assets and deepen coordinated improvement.

On his newest inspection tour to Guangdong in November, Xi harassed once more the necessity to improve cooperation in sci-tech innovation and the interconnection of infrastructure within the GBA, with an intention to attain the purpose of constructing a dynamic and internationally aggressive world-leading bay space and a world-class metropolis cluster.

“The requirements General Secretary Xi Jinping has set for coordinated innovation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area have been consistent. Unlike Beijing and Shanghai, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Science and Technology Innovation Center has been a three-place joint effort from the very beginning. It leverages the unique advantages of One Country, Two Systems, while aligning closely with global trends in sci-tech reform and industrial transformation. Under the dual drivers of institutional and technological innovation, the GBA has opened up a distinctive path of cross-border collaborative innovation,” stated Liu Quanhong, director of the Institute of Industrial and Technological Economics on the National Development and Reform Commission.

In 2019, the Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area formally set the purpose of constructing a global sci-tech innovation heart.

Anchored to that strategic purpose, Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao have been breaking down boundaries and innovating mechanisms to show scattered strengths right into a unified power.

Hard connectivity is quickly advancing. By this yr, the GBA’s railway traces in operation and beneath development will attain 4,700 kilometers, absolutely overlaying core and node cities and key metropolitan areas, reminiscent of Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

Soft connectivity can be being upgraded. Guangdong turned the primary province to permit provincial fiscal sci-tech funds to be allotted to Hong Kong and Macao, with a cumulative complete exceeding 600 million yuan (about 82.3 million U.S. {dollars}). So far, Guangdong and the 2 SARs have collectively issued 262 Bay Area Standards, and 187 high-frequency authorities companies can now be dealt with throughout the border.

With the help of those insurance policies, the cross-border circulate of individuals, capital, items and data throughout the GBA is accelerating to supply stronger momentum for innovation. The GBA has to this point constructed two nationwide laboratories, 45 state key laboratories and 33 joint laboratories involving Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, forming a multi-tier and high-level analysis infrastructure system.

In Shenzhen’s Bao’an District, authorities have simply launched greater than 500 software situations. These embody over 280 kilometers of open roads for L4 autonomous driving assessments, with airport environments to trial the most recent automation applied sciences and mountainous areas the place low-altitude drones can take a look at extra complicated routes. The new situations have drawn quite a lot of modern GBA firms to conduct on-site testing.

“Our cutting-edge technologies can quickly align with real market demands, saving about 40 percent in management costs. By refining our products in these scenarios, we are also driving improvements and breakthroughs in multiple key technologies,” stated Luo Lili, head of ecosystem cooperation at Hai Robotics, a know-how firm based mostly in Shenzhen.

The just-concluded Central Economic Work Conference as soon as once more emphasised constructing the GBA into a global sci-tech innovation heart, injecting recent coverage momentum into the GAB’s innovation drive.

Focusing on rising tracks, such because the low-altitude financial system and biomanufacturing, the GBA plans to domesticate 5 extra rising industrial clusters every price over 100 billion yuan (about 14.2 billion U.S. {dollars}), whereas accelerating the high-end and good transformation of its strengths in digital data and superior gear manufacturing.

“General Secretary Xi Jinping’s earnest expectations are the greatest driving force to our advancement. Next, we will continue to remove bottlenecks in the flow of innovation factors, strengthen rule alignment and institutional innovation, and promote complementation of advantages among Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao to build the Greater Bay Area into a source of major original innovation, a preferred destination for commercializing sci-tech achievements, and a new high land for modern industrial development to contribute the GBA’s strength to building an innovative country through concrete progress,” stated Wu Shiwen, deputy director of the Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province.

A landmark passenger route linking China’s southern island province of Hainan with Europe commenced operation on Sunday, marking the Hainan Free Trade Port’s first operational air service beneath the “seventh-freedom traffic right.”

Flight DV481, operated by Kazakhstan’s SCAT Airlines, left Sanya Phoenix International Airport on Sunday morning for Prague, the Czech Republic. The inaugural return flight, DV482, arrived in Sanya on Monday, with 115 Czech passengers efficiently getting into China.

Seventh-freedom rights permit an airline to hold passengers or cargo solely between two overseas nations with none connection to the airline’s dwelling nation.

The route is operated by SCAT Airlines utilizing a Boeing 737 MAX 9, with one round-trip flight scheduled per week.