Hengqin begins fast-paced ride to development

Hundreds of workers are racing against time along a new, palm-lined road leading to the southeastern section of the Hengqin New Area, next to Macau, to put the final touches on Asia's largest theme park before its first phase opens to the public later this year.

Billed as the "Orlando of China", Chimelong Ocean Kingdom is seeking to emulate the Florida city that has become one of the most popular holiday destinations in the United States after evolving from a sugarcane and citrus plantation hub. Much of the credit for that transformation belongs to the development of three theme parks: Universal Orlando Resort, SeaWorld Orlando and Walt Disney World.

Chimelong Ocean Kingdom is one of two big projects springing up on Zhuhai's biggest island. The 20 billion yuan (HK$25.1 billion) theme park, which will feature a 1,888-room hotel and China's longest wooden roller-coaster, is just a stone's throw from a University of Macau campus that is due to open this autumn.

The opening of the two projects will certainly put the 106-square-kilometre island, a former oyster bed, under the spotlight. But whether Hengqin can turn itself into a tourism, education, creative/cultural and traditional Chinese medicine hub and achieve its target of attracting up to 30 million visitors a year remains to be seen.

Hong Kong developers and mainland enterprises are taking a huge bet that it will succeed and are pouring hundreds of billions of yuan into transforming the virgin land into a holiday paradise.

"Hengqin will provide vital support to Macau, which sorely lacks land for further expansion, while Qianhai [in Shenzhen] will lend support to Hong Kong," said Chew Fook Aun, chairman of the Lai Fung Holdings, the mainland property arm of Lai Sun Development.