Greater Bay Area: Safe harbour or growth engine?

Few would have anticipated the world of today just a year ago. Amid geopolitical fractures, trade tensions and technological rivalry, the critical question for leaders is no longer how to manage disruption, but where to find solid ground for business, investment and long-term growth.

One region, more than any other, has become central to that search. In April, CUHK Business School, a committed Greater Bay Area (GBA) Connector, convened its inaugural GBA CEO Forum, bringing together more than 200 business leaders, policymakers and industry experts to explore what the GBA offers at this pivotal moment.

Opening the forum, Dr Fred Hu, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Primavera Capital Group and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Finance at CUHK Business School, posed a question that cut to the heart of the discussion: Is the GBA merely a safe haven from global turbulence, or does it offer something far more consequential?

An economy like no other

Dr Hu began with a series of statistics to put the region’s scale and economic heft into perspective. Encompassing Hong Kong, Macao and nine cities across Guangdong Province, the GBA covers just 0.6% of China’s land mass yet generates 11% of its GDP – equivalent to roughly US$2.1 trillion. Guangdong alone accounts for 20% of China’s foreign trade, making it the country’s key export engine. If the GBA were a sovereign economy, it would rank among the world’s seven largest, alongside economies such as Canada and Italy.

Underpinning the region’s rapid rise is no longer the low-end, low-cost, low-value-added manufacturing that defined China’s first wave of globalisation. High-tech, high-value-added industries now account for 34.7% of Guangdong’s manufacturing value added – more than double the national figure of 17.1%. Equally formidable is the region’s physical infrastructure. Its three major ports – Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Hong Kong – together constitute the world’s largest container throughput cluster. As a unified trading entity, the GBA generated US$2.7 trillion in total trade in 2025, ranking just behind Germany and eclipsing both South Korea and Japan.

Unrivalled capital firepower

The GBA’s global standing in capital markets is no less remarkable. With a financial ecosystem spanning venture capital, private equity and public markets, the region’s liquidity and investor depth are second only to New York’s.

In public markets, Hong Kong’s stock exchange reclaimed the global top spot for IPO fundraising in 2025, raising US$36.7 billion, outpacing both Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange. Four of the world’s ten largest IPOs that year were listed in Hong Kong, including CATL and Zijin Gold International. Yet new listings are only part of the story. By secondary market trading volume, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange now ranks among the top three exchanges worldwide, with trading volume growing 65% year on year in 2025, while Hong Kong’s exchange grew 95% over the same period.

Private markets have been just as dynamic. As an integrated economic region, the GBA ranks first in China by venture capital and private equity investment volume. Valuations on the Hang Seng TECH Index remain attractively low, offering what Dr Hu described as “the best option relative to peers” for investors seeking quality growth at reasonable entry valuations.

Anchoring the region’s financial standing is Hong Kong’s position as a leading global financial centre. The latest Global Financial Centres Index ranks the city third in the world, effectively level with London. “Our real goalpost is now New York,” Dr Hu said. “But we can no longer think about Hong Kong in isolation. As an integral part of the GBA, we need to think strategically about what Hong Kong and Shenzhen can achieve together. If the two exchanges truly combine their strengths, we will be unstoppable.”

The world’s leading innovation cluster

Of all the GBA’s strengths, innovation drew Dr Hu’s greatest enthusiasm. The region is home to 72 unicorn companies – more than India, South Korea and Singapore combined. More strikingly, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has ranked the Shenzhen–Hong Kong–Guangzhou cluster as the world’s leading innovation hub, ahead of Tokyo–Yokohama, San Jose–San Francisco (Silicon Valley) and Beijing.

WIPO’s ranking measures scientific publications, PCT patent filings and venture capital activity, areas in which the GBA commands global shares of 2.4%, 9.0% and 2.9% respectively. Dr Hu noted that the companies behind these figures are not just giants like BYD, Tencent or Huawei, but startups that represent the next wave of innovation champions. Beyond these metrics, the GBA is also the key pillar of China’s AI economy. It produced 43.5% of China’s industrial robots and attracted US$4.9 billion in AI-related IPO proceeds in Hong Kong in December 2025 and January 2026 alone.

Reinforcing this momentum is an intensity of R&D investment that puts the GBA ahead of many economies long considered innovation leaders. Guangdong alone invests 3.6% of GDP in R&D – outpacing the United States, Japan, Switzerland and Germany – while Shenzhen’s R&D investment has reached 6.7%, surpassing Israel and South Korea. Numbers like these point not just to current achievement but to the scale of the region’s future ambitions.

A deep pool of talent

Innovation at this scale demands a pipeline of exceptional talent, and the GBA’s foundations in this area continue to strengthen. “We train and develop talent from within, while also attracting talent from outside,” Dr Hu said. Five of Hong Kong’s universities rank among the global top 100 in the 2025 QS rankings, with several mainland institutions rising quickly in global standings. Hong Kong’s performance in the IMD World Talent Ranking soared from 11th place in 2021 to 4th in 2025, placing it above Singapore. Perhaps most remarkably, 42.4% of the city’s graduates hold degrees in the sciences – the highest proportion of any economy in the world.

Safe harbour and growth engine: both, and by design

For Dr Hu, being a safe harbour and a growth engine are not competing propositions. They are the same – and mutually reinforcing.

As a safe harbour, the GBA offers indispensability: even as manufacturing shifts to other markets, R&D, high-tech content and command-and-control remain here. It is hyper-connected across air, land and sea, with financial and energy infrastructure built for the demands of the 21st century. Its resilience, tested through successive cycles of global disruption, provides the stability and predictability that long-term investment requires.

The case for the GBA as a growth engine is equally compelling. The region is home to Asia Pacific’s leading financial centre, cutting-edge digital and physical infrastructure, a deep and rapidly expanding talent pool and the world’s top-ranked innovation cluster. These are not inherited advantages; they are the product of deliberate, sustained investment, and their effects continue to compound.

Dr Hu’s conclusion was clear. “There is nothing in economic history quite like what we are seeing in the GBA right now,” he said. “More than a refuge from global uncertainty, the GBA is the largest, most ambitious, most exciting economic experiment in the world. The GBA is the future. We should all feel incredibly fortunate and deeply empowered by the tremendous opportunities this region offers every one of us.”