O
n the 42nd floor of the 330-metre-high Zhuhai
Tower, in the reception of the opulent St Regis
Zhuhai hotel, an enormous mural occupies an
entire wall opposite the reception desks. The
mural depicts part of Zhuhai in the early 1900s,
showing a beautiful village at the bottom of a
verdant hillside. Rong Hong, the first Chinese
student to graduate from an American university (Yale),
is strolling away from the town and towards the viewer of
the painting. Not far behind him, two children can be seen
playing. Behind the town, the ocean is filled with sailboats.
This, one of the hotel staff tells me, is what the area
surrounding Zhuhai Tower used to look like, but now it’s
unrecognisable when compared with the painting. All
traces of the village seem to have disappeared, and the area
is now being developed by state-owned enterprise Zhuhai
Huafa Group. There are three major hotels (including the
St Regis) in the vicinity, as well as a huge convention and
exhibition centre.
“When I was little, Zhuhai was just a very small city,
very few people were here, and I could not see a lot of high
buildings. It was just like the countryside, but now it’s
quite different, especially in this area,” says Angel Huang,
marketing officer at the Zhuhai International Convention
& Exhibition Center.
The centre’s largest and most prestigious function room,
the 4,500 sqm and 12.6-metre-high Zhuhai Hall, tends to
be rented for provincial government functions. Even some
large multinationals have balked at the expense of renting
out this expansive area, PR officer Lehong Chen tells me
during a tour.
The centre occupies a footprint of 269,000 sqm and
a gross floor area of around 970,000 sqm (split into two
phases). It has recently hosted events including The 3rd
China-Israel Investment Summit, Walmart’s New Year
Celebration Meeting and a FAW-Volkswagen New Sagitar
Press Conference.
Zhuhai is now a city of around 1.6 million people,
which may seem large but is relatively small by Chinese
standards. By comparison, Beijing and Shanghai are
home to well over 20 million people each. However,
Zhuhai is likely to rise in prominence both in China and
internationally in the coming years, due to its integral
positioning in the Chinese government’s Greater Bay Area
(GBA) initiative. The city also has a unique advantage over
the other cities in the GBA: the 55-kilometre Hong Kong-
Zhuhai-Macau bridge, opened in October 2018, makes
Zhuhai the only mainland Chinese city linked directly to
both Macau and Hong Kong by land.
Major industries in Zhuhai include digital information,
biomedicine, home appliances, electric energ y,
petrochemicals, precision machinery and travel, says
Harley Seyedin, president of The American Chamber of
Commerce in South China. “We can observe from this
unique blend that the city is ready to become the dark
horse of the Greater Bay Area,” he says.“Zhuhai is one of those areas that’s been under-utilised- understated. It’s not really been known what its direction
would be. They’ve dabbled in every kind of industry you
could imagine, but it’s not been the immediate sought-
after focal point for any particular industry. The GBA will
change that.”
The OrlandO Of China
A major contributor to Zhuhai’s success is likely to be
Hengqin, an island to its south that is about three times
the size of Macau. Little known outside of China, much
of the island now resembles a giant construction site, but
its strategic location right next to Macau means it can
take advantage of Macau’s lack of spare land by building
attractions to lure more tourists over the border.
Billy Chan, director, international affairs office at
Macau University of Science and Technolog y’s faculty
of medicine lives in Macau and often observes Hengqin
Island when he takes coffee on his balcony each morning.
He believes Hengqin has potential, but is definitely still in
its early stages of development.
“They have a lot of bricks and mortar and glass and
steel, and buildings standing up and half-finished,” he
says. “Hengqin is a great spot, it’s really close to Zhuhai.
I’m sure the government will give lots of incentives [for
development], but I don’t see a lot of activity yet – besides a
lot of buildings. It’s like the lights are on but nobody’s home.”‘When I was little, Zhuhai was just a very small city,
very few people were here, and I could not see a lot of
high buildings... Now it’s quite different’ABOVE AND
OPPOSITE PAGE:
Zhuhai International
Convention &
Exhibition Center,
with Macau in the
background;
and Zhuhai Tower28
destinations