Guangdong mega-infrastructure to link seven cities, but HK

A bullet train leaves from the Guangzhou South Railway Station

Planners from Guangdong Province have announced a project that will link seven cities surrounding the Pearl River estuary area with Guangzhou, but Hong Kong has been ominously excluded from this plan.

The comprehensive transportation network will be comprised of 77 connected transportation routes, among which 63 have been built and 14 are still under construction.

As first reported by mainland’s News GD, the tnetwork will cater to a variety of transportation types including national rail, intercity rail, metro lines, expressways and urban roads, as well as sea and aviation links.

Among the various links is the Guangzhou-Zhongshan-Zhuhai-Macau intercity rail project. Estimated to cost around RMB36.6 billion, the 152-kilometer rail project is being spearheaded by planners in Guangzhou, Zhongshan and Zhuhai.

The seven cities that will be connected to the provincial capital are Foshan, Dongguan, Shenzhen, Zhongshan, Jiangmen, Zhuhai and Macau. Noticeably missing, according to the GD News report, is the neighboring HKSAR. The reason for this is not clear.

It is possible that Guangdong planners understand that the city is given adequate access in the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link (XRL) project; a huge infrastructure project in its own right. The XRL, which is expected to be completed during the third quarter of 2018, will eventually link the three southern Chinese cities with Beijing.

However, that does not explain why cities like Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Macau have been named as part of the plan.

Instead, it may be an attempt by Guangdong officials to back off from an already tense situation in Hong Kong in relation to the XRL project. Critics say that the rail link is a means for Beijing to extend its influence over the city and, as a result, accelerate the process of ‘mainlandization.’

The mega-infrastructure project is expected to result in economic benefits for the cities involved. Ease and variety of connectivity are conducive to trade growth.

It comes under the banner of the Greater Bay policy framework designed to create a cluster of cities in the Pearl River estuary area, with specialized ‘districts’ playing to their respective, comparative advantages in the manufacturing and service sectors.

In March China’s premier, Li Keqiang, endorsed the Greater Bay area plan. This formally set the project in motion, although the idea had been initially proposed more than a decade earlier. DB