China's State Council issued an overall plan to promote comprehensive 
cooperation among Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao by further deepening 
opening-up in the Nansha district of South China's Guangdong province, 
according to a circular released on June 14. 

Nansha will step up such cooperation to build it into a center of strategic 
importance that collaborates with Hong Kong and Macao and benefits the Greater 
Bay Area (GBA) and beyond, the circular said. The district is set to further 
drive cooperation and opening-up in the GBA as it embraces an opportunity to 
evolve from the region's geographic center to a key functional role.

The district significantly connects to urban clusters in the GBA as it serves 
as Guangzhou's only gateway to sea routes. "About 38 nautical miles away from 
Hong Kong and 41 nautical miles away from Macao, Nansha can link to the GBA's 
11 cities and the international airports of Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong 
within a 100-kilometer radius," noted Dong Ke, mayor of Nansha. The district 
has put the building of a "half-hour transportation circle" on a fast track 
since the start of constructing the GBA. That provides more solid groundwork 
for collaboration with Hong Kong and Macao to develop Nansha into a door for 
high-level opening-up, according to Nansha District People's Government of 
Guangzhou City.

Colored container trucks shuttle back and forth throughout the Nansha Port area 
dominated by the sounds of cranes humming. In 2021, the port became one of the 
world's busiest seaports, seeing up to 17.66 million TEU containers shipped 
across its foreign trade network that comprises 135 sea routes. On May 30, 
2022, a China-Europe freight train departed from the Nansha Port, a move 
marking the integration of the Silk Road Economic Belt with the 21st Century 
Maritime Silk Road. The multimodal rail-water-road transport system was made 
possible by the operation of the Nansha Port Railway, said Song Xiaoming, vice 
general manager of Guangzhou Port Company, adding that an increase in 
China-Europe freight-train services put the district in a better position to 
support the GBA in building the Belt and Road and to connect with the rest of 
the world. 

Buy from and sell to the world. The commitment to opening up has turned Nansha 
into a hub for cross-border e-commerce, with a total of nearly 600 companies 
registered for that particular business to date. The value of trade in 
cross-border e-commerce between January and May grew by some 87% year-on-year 
to about RMB 15 billion.

At the same time, Nansha features more prominently in the global business 
landscape as it is on track to emerge as a brand-new center for international 
exchanges. While the permanent site of the Greater-Bay Science Forum is being 
planned, the International Finance Forum (IFF) annual meeting has been hosted 
nonstop. That being said, Nansha will build a new platform for the GBA to 
increase international economic cooperation under the Belt and Road framework. 
This is how Nansha further integrates into the regional and global economy.

Nansha now leads the GBA in sci-tech innovation endeavors. To be specific, it 
is home to over 620 companies in artificial intelligence and biotechnology. A 
host of homegrown high-tech firms, such as Zhaoke Ophthalmology and CloudWalk 
Technology, went public, and CAS Space Exploration, Guangdong's first unicorn 
company in commercial spaceflight, was relocated to Nansha. Innovations emerge 
at a faster rate. Moreover, the district has stayed committed to Guangdong-Hong 
Kong-Macao joint sci-tech innovation systems and mechanisms, as evidenced by 
the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), which will 
start operation this September. The HKUST (GZ) project, in turn, enables Nansha 
to motivate universities to play their inherent role in driving innovation. And 
among others, an industrial park for entrepreneurs and innovators from 
Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao will be in place around the HKUST (GZ) campus as 
a way to create synergy among the government, industries, universities and 
research institutes. 

Founded as a state-level new area and part of China (Guangdong) Pilot Free 
Trade Zone, Nansha has grown from a demonstration zone of all-round cooperation 
among Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao to the world-facing carrier of strategic 
importance for greater collaboration with Hong Kong and Macao. That means the 
district has an increasingly significant role to play in national development 
strategies. More importantly, it shows the world where the GBA will go and how 
China remains committed to reform and opening up.

Source: Nansha District People's Government of Guangzhou City