Reference News Network reported on April 4 (reporter Chongjun Zhang Luyu) "The future rise and fall of mankind may depend on whether the world can find a suitable way to cooperate. The Greater Bay Area is an example of cooperation under the great changes in the global development landscape. Lord Davidson, spokesman of the British Labour Party's Shadow Cabinet and member of the House of Lords of Parliament, expressed his views at this "Understanding China" thematic forum, which explained the importance of the high-quality development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area from another level.

From April 4 to 18, the thematic forum "Understanding China, Dialogue Bay Area" was held in Guangzhou. With the theme of "Chinese-style Modernization and New Opportunities in the World", guests from all over the world gathered and wonderful views frequently came out to observe the new opportunities brought by Chinese-style modernization to the world from different perspectives.

The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has become a hot topic of discussion at this forum because of its important strategic position in the new development pattern of the country and its new mission of "becoming a strategic fulcrum of the new development pattern, a demonstration place for high-quality development, and a leading place for Chinese-style modernization". Institutional innovation, high-level opening up, international business environment... Through the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the world is seeing high-quality development of China.

Institutional innovation interprets the new connotation of China's "Chinese-style modernization"

The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area regards "building a first-class bay area and world-class city cluster with vitality and international competitiveness, and creating a model of high-quality development" as its long-term strategic goal. Its vigorous development and good business environment attracted the attention of the participants.

"The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area proves what can be achieved with careful planning." Lord Davidson said at the forum.

Since the implementation of the Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Guangzhou and other major cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area have always adhered to optimizing the business environment for foreign investment and strengthening high-quality opening up. Today, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is gradually realizing cross-border collaborative innovation of "one country, two systems, three customs territories and three currencies" in the region.

Not long ago, the statistical departments of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao successively released economic data for 2022, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area performed well. Data show that the total economic volume of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area will exceed 2022 trillion yuan in 13. According to other statistics, by the end of 2022, the governments of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao jointly held the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Global Investment Conference, and 853 cooperation projects were reached on the spot, with a total investment of 2.5 trillion yuan.

In February this year, after the release of reform and innovation measures to promote deepening financial cooperation in the Greater Bay Area, institutional innovation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area once again attracted widespread attention from overseas media. The website of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post quoted HSBC as saying: "These measures will promote capital flows in the Greater Bay Area and support the economic integration of the region." ”

While promoting the business environment and financial construction, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area will continue to deepen green finance cooperation in the region, increase the scale of green bond issuance, and explore the establishment of unified green finance standards. Supported by institutional innovation, the scale of the green bond market in the Greater Bay Area continues to rise.

Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun published an article saying that the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area strives to build a highly developed bay area economy comparable to New York and Tokyo. The article believes that the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area will continue to advance.

Participants said that the development achievements of major areas such as business environment, finance, and dual carbon in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area have become the epitome of Chinese-style modernization. Lord Davidson believes that the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is moving towards high-quality innovative development and striving for Chinese-style modernization.

Promote digitalization and highlight China's high-quality development achievements

"If I had to describe China's development from then (1978) to today, there was one word to describe it, and it would be breathtaking." At the forum, Arroyo, former president of the Philippines, senior deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, and honorary chairman of the Philippine-Chinese Understanding Association, said in a video speech. Arroyo summed up four key factors for China's success over the past 40 years, one of which is "valuing the most advanced science and technology."

In the world's first-class bay area, scientific and technological innovation has become a new engine for regional development. In China, scientific and technological innovation has also become one of the important driving forces for promoting Chinese-style modernization and achieving high-quality development.

Manoh Josh, a special researcher at the Indian Observer Research Foundation, believes that for China to achieve further growth, it needs to strengthen basic research and build a platform for scientific and technological innovation. He suggested that China build the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area into one of the international science and technology innovation hubs.

In fact, as a new measure to promote the formation of a new pattern of comprehensive opening up in the new era, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area not only has an important strategic position in the overall development of the country, but also plays a key role in China's promotion of digitalization and other technological innovation processes.

With the promotion of policies, major cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area have pressed the "fast forward button" for digital construction. On September 2022, 9, the Guangzhou Data Exchange was officially inaugurated in Nansha, marking the official establishment of Guangdong provincial data trading institutions. On the same day, more than 30 data products were listed on the Guangzhou Data Exchange, involving finance, transportation, construction, information and other industries, with a cumulative transaction volume of more than 300 million yuan.

With the support of a number of major cities, last year, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area was identified as one of the eight national computing power hub nodes of the national project "East Data and West Computing", and the construction of the "Digital Bay Area" was supported by national strategic resources. With the blessing of digitalization, technological innovation in the Greater Bay Area has shown a high-quality development trend. According to the Global Innovation Index 8 released by the World Intellectual Property Organization, the "Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou" technology cluster ranked second in the world for three consecutive years.

In key technology fields such as 5G and artificial intelligence, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has leading advantages. With the support of science and technology, related industries in the region have also achieved high-quality development. Semiconductors and integrated circuits, high-end equipment manufacturing, intelligent robots, blockchain and quantum information strategic emerging industrial clusters have gradually landed in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

In order to provide intellectual protection for digitalization and technological innovation, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has built a "hub" and "academic domain" academic structure. On September 2022, 9, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) officially settled in Nansha, sharing resources and complementary advantages with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and laying out a number of forward-looking and strategic major science and technology projects.

The digital development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area also left a deep impression on the participants.

Speaking at the forum, Lord Davidson said: "In the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the development of new technologies is taking great strides, which will determine what the future will be shaped. There are 16 startups in the field of quantum computing in the Greater Bay Area, and there is the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Brain Science and Brain-like Research Center, and the level of the medical industry is constantly improving... All of this reflects a focus on future technologies. The transformation from general 'manufacturing' to high-quality 'intelligent manufacturing' is in full swing. ”

Seize talents and build an open regional collaborative innovation community

"To become a science and technology innovation center, we need the collision of ideas of different civilizations and cultures, talents are very important, we must seize talents." Where talent goes, capital goes, and technology is the product of talent. At the forum, Zheng Yongnian, professor of Hong Kong Chinese University (Shenzhen), president of the Qianhai Institute of International Affairs, and chairman of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Research Institute in Guangzhou, proposed that "foreigners looking at China's reform and opening up, first look at Guangdong", and at present, Guangdong still needs to introduce talents, and the way to solve it is the integration of the Greater Bay Area.

In Zheng Yongnian's view, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has comparative advantages in terms of talent compared with other regions in China.

In recent years, the Greater Bay Area has also focused a lot on talent gathering. With the completion and use of more and more cross-border infrastructure, the "soft connectivity" of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has been further deepened, the world-class three-dimensional transportation system in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has begun to take shape, and the "one-hour living circle" and "1-minute medical treatment circle" in the region have gradually taken shape. Guangdong, where major cities in the Greater Bay Area gather, continues to nurture talents to inhabit the "ecosystem" and continuously introduces preferential policies, such as the "Talent Premium Guangdong Card" to conveniently handle 30 types of matters such as residence suspension, entry and exit, and industrial and commercial registration.

Through the Guangdong Pilot Free Trade Zone, universities, research institutes, multinational companies and other carriers, all kinds of international scientific research talents have poured into the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Hong Kong's Sing Tao Daily website said that mainland cities in the Greater Bay Area have become hot spots for many Hong Kong people to seek job opportunities. More than half of Hong Kong people living in Mainland cities in the Greater Bay Area are satisfied with their living conditions.

"Our high-quality development and technological development require three major conditions: first, we must have a group of universities and institutions with basic scientific research capabilities; Second, it has a large number of enterprises and institutions that can transform basic scientific research into applied technology; The third is financial institutions that provide financial support. Zheng Yongnian believes that these three conditions will be met after the integration of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Integrated, it is completely comparable to California.

In recent years, as one of the regions with the highest degree of openness and economic vitality in China, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has attracted global attention. The website of the Japan Times once commented: "The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is China's emerging dynamic growth and deepening connection center. ”

Fu Xin, Distinguished Professor of Public Politics at the School of Public Administration of Tsinghua University and former Minister of Tourism of Brazil, also pointed out at the forum that the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is the best representative of China's global and open nature. He believes that the development of the Greater Bay Area shows that China will lead the world in manufacturing, innovation and other fields in the future.

"We have to think about what the GBA is positioned in the future. If the world economic situation will be more difficult and the political situation will be more tense in the next 5-10 years, what contribution can the Greater Bay Area make to China and the world? This is a question we should ask ourselves. Fu Xin said.