Editor's Notes: China has made considerable progress in the construction of the GBA during the past five years. Next, the country will focus on boosting technological innovation, boosting coordinated industrial development, and improving people's livelihoods for the development of the GBA, according to the report of the Communist Party of China's 20th National Congress.
Chongqing - China experienced rapid change in the last ten years from the view of an Australian cyclist who is an international resident and a witness.
While he is not cycling, Jerry Grey will manage his social media account on Twitter and Youtube to share his thoughts about China. Jerry's Twitter: @Jerry_grey2002 (Photo provided to iChongqing)
Jerry Grey came to China in 2004. He was born in the UK and immigrated to Australia at 28, choosing China as his third home.
While working as an English teacher, he met his wife at Zhongshan, a city in the Greater Bay Area, which was also called the Pearl River Delta, one of the most populated and economically advanced areas in China.
He is in love with cycling. In 2014, Grey took 57 days riding from the border of Macau to the border of Kazakhstan, from China's skyscrapers and fancy malls to West China's endless deserts. In 2019, joined by his wife and another friend, his team took another 57 days from Urumqi to Zhongshan, with a distance of over 4,000 kilometers.
Alongside the beautiful exotic scenery, Grey kept blogging about his journey, showing the massive and fast change in the country. He wrote down a sentence in 2014 as he crossed a city in Ningxia with terribly bumpy road conditions, "the best thing about the city is the road out of the city."
"Five years later, when we rode into that city again on a beautiful new tarmac road, we stayed in a lovely hotel. It's an entirely different city," he said.
"It's not for everyone; I'm sure we all have a little adventure in us, and what we do will always be different from the other person - you might prefer to climb a mountain or walk across a desert, whatever it is there's always something you'd like to do," said Jerry to the reporter as we discussed the admirable cycling sport. (Photo provided to iChongqing)
Supporting Hong Kong and Macao in the GBA construction
The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge. (Photo/Xinhua)
A few days ago, Grey retweeted an article from GDToday about the last ten years' development of Guangdong province on Wechat.
"I couldn't be happier with my choice to stay (in the GBA), a decision I made over 17 years ago," he commented in the article.
The GBA is referred to as the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. It is one of the most economically advanced megalopolis, with 5% of China's total population contributing about 12% of its total GDP.
Living in Zhongshan, a city whose reputation is not as big as its brothers Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Grey also felt the fast improvement in terms of people's daily life in the last ten years.
Grey knew that the development blueprint for the Pearl River Delta was initially brought up in the 1980s. Seeing the growingly dense roads and fast train that connects Zhongshan to Hong Kong, he complimented Zhongshan's metro system and Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge under construction, which aims to improve the inter-city connection between Zhongshan and other cities in the Greater Bay Area.
"Everything in the West changes when the conservative government gets ousted, and the labor government comes in, or when the democrats go, and the republicans come in," said Grey. "After four or five years, whatever your term is, everything stops and has to restart again."
"That doesn't happen in China," he said.
China will ramp up efforts to build the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area into a world-class bay area and forge an exemplary model of high-quality development, said an official with the country's top economic regulator at a news conference in Beijing for the 20th National Congress of the CPC, according to China Daily.
The country will fully support Hong Kong and Macao in participating in GBA construction, creating broader development space and injecting impetus into their development.
Witnessing China's Ecological Restoration
Recently, Grey saw someone posted a photo of a wild leopard cat in Shenzhen's water park. Analysts said that only big cat animals might migrate to the urban area along the Dasha River of Shenzhen after the ecological conditions like food are restored.
A similar incident happened a few months ago when a Bryde's whale was found at Dapeng Bay in Shenzhen. Shenzhen's bay area used to be the paradise of whales and dolphins, but the last time people saw whales in Shenzhen was 16 years ago.
"China was badly polluted when I first came here. It is not now," Grey said.
One of the key indicators of environmental pollution is the carbon footprint. According to the Emissions Database of Global Atmospheric Research(EDGAR) report, China's emission per capita was behind developed countries like Canada, Australia, and the United States.
"Canada and Australia don't have the manufacturing base that China has. So China is the largest manufacturer in the world, with the most people, and its per capita pollution index is a hell of a lot lower," Grey said.
Grey said China is enforcing an ambitious plan to improve its carbon emission, the "Double Carbon" Strategy. By 2030, carbon emissions will reach a peak. In 2060, China will realize "zero emission" by offsetting projects. Jerry held an optimistic view about this government's grand target.
"Every ambitious target I've seen in China is achieved for itself. They can do it," he said.