Panyu rail hub set to shift focal point of Guangzhou by 2020, academic says

When the first train from Hong Kong on the controversial express line to Guangzhou stops at the terminus in Shibi, Panyu, it will have arrived at the nucleus of a burgeoning new city, part of the provincial capital's southward expansion.

In 2015, when the Hong Kong section of the line is due for completion, a 350km/h line to Wuhan will have been operating for three years and by 2020 the station - one of Asia's biggest with a footprint of 150,000 square metres - will encompass three such high-speed lines to key cities, a light-rail system and three metro lines.

And this, according to Professor Zheng Tianxiang, is why Hongkongers should be pleased - not unhappy - that their HK$65 billion line will terminate at Shibi rather than the present city centre at Tianhe, which he says will eventually be eclipsed by new developments.

Zheng, of the Pearl River Delta research centre at Zhongshan University, and MTR Corporation officials sang the praises of Shibi during a media tour to the site organised by the MTR this week.

'Some Hong Kong intellectuals ask why the high-speed train station was not located in downtown Guangzhou,' Zheng said. 'But the area around the existing Guangzhou East Station has little land for further development, and if you acquire lots of land to build a train station in downtown Guangzhou, it wouldn't be very economical or efficient.'

He said central government studies predicted that the population of the Tianhe district would grow from one million in 2005 to 1.39 million in 2020, while the population of Panyu district around Shibi would grow from 1.25 million in 2005 to 2.03 million in 2020.