Bridge connecting Zhongshan with Shenzhen creates new development opportunities in greater bay area

On Tuesday, one month after the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link – a 24-kilometer cross-sea transport infrastructure – was opened to traffic, Zhongshan city hosted a global investment promotion conference, hoping to share the development opportunities created.

With the theme "Sharing the New Link and Seizing the New Opportunities", the conference showcased the broad development space offered by Zhongshan in South China's Guangdong province and the excellent business environment there.

The total investment amount for projects negotiated and signed at the conference exceeded 300 billion yuan ($41.51 billion). The projects were in advanced manufacturing sectors, such as high-end equipment manufacturing, new-generation information technology, biopharmaceuticals and health, new energy, new materials and the low-altitude economy, and the modern service industry, including cultural tourism, new retail, high-end catering and hotels.

The projects involved countries such as the United States and Spain, and also important regions including the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area and the Yangtze River Delta.

The conference held special business attracting and matching activities, with the focus on Zhongshan's 10 large modern industrial clusters ranging from new energy, intelligent home appliances and lights to advanced equipment and food and modern agriculture.

The participants also included representatives from noted higher learning institutions, such as The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Macau University of Science and Technology, influential companies and the Guangzhou consulates of nearly 20 countries.

Guo Wenhai, Party secretary of Zhongshan, said at the conference that the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link focused world attention on the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the Pearl River Estuary. Its opening to traffic marked the start of the next stage in the integration of Shenzhen and Zhongshan, two cities on the estuary's eastern and western banks facing each other across the river.

The Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link serves as a golden and open road for Zhongshan to reach out to the world and for the world to enter Zhongshan, Guo said.

The link, a nationally major project, took seven years to complete. It cuts the drive time between Shenzhen and Zhongshan from two hours to half an hour. It increases Zhongshan's location advantages and, according to local media, it will enable the city to integrate into the Bay Area in a completely new way.

Zhongshan is an important manufacturing center in the Bay Area, with 34 major industrial categories, three 100-billion-yuan industry clusters and eight 10-billion-yuan industry clusters. Over the past 40-plus years since the opening-up policy was adopted, the city has seen batches of outstanding entrepreneurs make great efforts and create brilliant achievements.

In the past few years, Zhongshan has transformed its inefficient industrial parks in the suburbs, establishing 10 large modern industrial parks with high standards. With the upgrading of the "space" and "level" of its attraction to investment, it highlighted "global investment promotion" for the first time in 2023. Currently, the city houses nearly 80,000 industrial enterprises.

In the first half of 2024, Zhongshan's industrial investment increased by 21 percent year-on-year and its industrially technical upgrading investment rose by 44.9 percent.

The city has always prioritized improvement of the business environment among its reforms, making efforts to create an internationalized environment for companies. In Zhongshan, it has become the norm that projects will acquire land for use and begin construction soon after they have been signed.

The 2024 Zhongshan Global Investment Promotion Conference launches an investment invitation event on Tuesday. XIA SHENGQUAN/FOR CHINA DAILY

Foreign guests converse at the conference held in Zhongshan on Tuesday. CHINA DAILY