The Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge shown under construction on April 6.[Photo by Wen Zhicheng]

The Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge, which connects Shenzhen City and Zhongshan City, is expected to open operationally in 2024. Upon its completion, the bridge will be another mega-project within the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area after the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge.

Eleven cities in the Greater Bay Area are located on both sides of the Pearl River Estuary. With a length of 24 kilometers, the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge will link eastern and western cities in the Pearl River Delta.

Zhongshan, the hometown of Dr Sun Yat-sen, lies on one side of the bridge, and it is an important traffic hub which links the eastern and western banks of the Pearl River. As the development of the Greater Bay Area progresses, Zhongshan, a significant node city, is sparing no effort to develop into an important hub in the Greater Bay Area.

Accelerating infrastructure construction is one of the vital tasks of Greater Bay Area development. Zhongshan is speeding up transportation infrastructure construction, and it has seen significant progress. Zhongshan Station on the Guangzhou-Zhuhai Inter-city Railway has been incorporated into the national high-speed rail network, and it now connects to over 30 large and medium-sized cities across the country. Zhongshan's road traffic has entered the "highway and expressway era," with total mileage exceeding 3,000 km. Zhongshan Port is a first-class national port that foreign ships can sail directly into and out of.

"Within the next three years, Zhongshan will invest another 140 billion yuan on road construction and in establishing a vital traffic hub in the western Pearl River Delta. In the near future, people traveling from Zhongshan will be able to arrive in Guangzhou or Shenzhen in half an hour. Furthermore, travelers will be able to reach many other Greater Bay Area cities in one hour," said Chen Xudong, Secretary of the Zhongshan Committee of CPC.

"Building an international technology innovation center is also a significant part of Greater Bay Area development. Zhongshan has many unique industrial support advantages in the sector of innovative achievement transformation and, in particular, in technological achievement industrialization," said Yin Ming, Director of the Zhongshan Bureau of Science and Technology.

Presently, the city owns 38 national industrial bases, including three 100-billion-yuan-level industry clusters, ranging from equipment manufacturing and information technology to white household appliances, and five 50-billion-yuan-level industry clusters.

In addition, a portfolio of Greater Bay Area cooperative projects is settling on Zhongshan with greater speed. Last year, Zhongshan and Macao signed a cooperation framework agreement. Both cities will jointly build a national biomedical technology innovation zone in order to deepen healthcare cooperation between Guangdong and Macao.

Currently, more young people than ever before are coming from Hong Kong and Macao to make Zhongshan their homes for employment and entrepreneurship. These young, talented people are coming here because they are being enticed by the preferential policies to be found in the Greater Bay Area and the growing urban attraction of the city.