(Bloomberg) — Another step in China\u2019s project to bring Hong Kong into its bosom is complete and is set to connect the former European outposts\u2026<\/b>
\n(Bloomberg) — Another step in China\u2019s project to bring Hong Kong into its bosom is complete and is set to connect the former European outposts of Hong Kong and Macau with the mainland.
The $15 billion, 55-kilometer (34-mile) bridge, which Xinhua says is the world\u2019s longest sea link, opens for business at 9 a.m. Wednesday and is tipped to carry some 29,000 cars and trucks daily between Zhuhai on the mainland and Hong Kong, a former British colony. The waters over which the bridge stands now was formerly patrolled by three navies, and the land borders were decades ago guarded by the People\u2019s Liberation Army to mostly keep defectors from leaving.
The project is part of President Xi Jinping\u2019s sweeping plan to knit the so-called Greater Bay Area in southern Guangdong province into a high-tech megalopolis to rival California\u2019s Silicon Valley. It also envisions a better marriage between China\u2019s industrial might and its one-party state and the liberal, capitalist bastions of Hong Kong and Macau, which have their own passports, currencies, trade policies, courts and civil rights.
The Greater Bay Area could serve as a new growth engine for the capital markets of Hong Kong, the casinos of Macau, formerly a Portuguese colony, and nearby Shenzhen, the economic powerhouse one of Xi\u2019s predecessors, Deng Xiaoping, built on their doorstep almost four decades ago. The area — with 67 million residents — would boast a trillion-dollar economy and eclipse Japan as the world\u2019s fourth-largest exporter, according to HSBC Holdings Plc.
The sea bridge is the latest to link Hong Kong directly to the mainland. In September, the city plugged into China\u2019s 15,500-mile high-speed rail network with a futuristic new terminus overlooking the Victoria Harbor. A train to Beijing from Hong Kong now would take nine hours and cost less than half the price of flight ticket.
Eiffel Tower
About 400,000 metric tons of steel was used to build the bridge, or enough to build 55 Eiffel Towers, according to the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Authority. Bringing the less developed part of Guangdong closer to Hong Kong, the link will help reduce travel time by road to Zhuhai to about 30 minutes, from three hours.
The bridge was built on one of the world\u2019s busiest sea routes, where more than 4,000 vessels and 1,800 flights travel back and forth daily, carrying annually more than 20 million people and 1.2 billion tons of goods. The area is also known for strong typhoons each year and rare marine species including Chinese white dolphins.
–With assistance from Adrian Leung.
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Sam Nagarajan in Hong Kong at samnagarajan@bloomberg.net;John Follain in Rome at jfollain2@bloomberg.net;Dong Lyu in Beijing at dlyu3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net,;Anand Krishnamoorthy at anandk@bloomberg.net, Sam Nagarajan
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