Another step in China’s 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’s longest sea link, will open for traffic at 9 am 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’s Liberation Army to mostly keep defectors from leaving.

The project is part of President Xi Jinping’s sweeping plan to knit the so-called Greater Bay Area in southern Guangdong province into a high-tech megalopolis to rival California’s Silicon Valley. It also envisions a better marriage between China’s 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’s 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’s fourth-largest exporter, according to HSBC Holdings Plc.