Birthplace of China’s revered revolutionary Sun Yat-sen now one of the country’s top property hotspots

At the sales centre for the Leading New Wave apartment complex in the Cuiheng New District in the southern Chinese city of Zhongshan last Thursday, buyers strained to get the attention of sales agents besieged by hordes of customers looking to snap up a flat in one of China’s hottest property markets.

They had come for the second sale of units at the complex, built by top Chinese developers Poly Property and Country Garden, after the first batch of 100 sold out in a single day in January at prices averaging 17,000 yuan per square metre (HK$1,957 or US$250 per square foot), some three times the average property price in the city three years ago.

Zhongshan, the birthplace of the revolutionary Sun Yat-sen who is revered as the father of modern China, is one of 11 cities in the Chinese government’s “Greater Bay Area” initiative – a grand development plan to link it and Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Foshan, Dongguan, Huizhou, Zhuhai, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing into an integrated economic and business hub.

The Guangdong provincial government has committed 1.46 trillion yuan (US$231 billion) to build bridges, highways and railways to accelerate the transformation of the region into an area like the New York Bay Area, the San Francisco Bay Area or the Tokyo Bay Area.

By 2030, the gross domestic product of the Greater Bay Area could reach US$4.6 trillion, according to projections by the China Centre for Economic Exchanges, more than triple today’s level, and the highest among bay areas worldwide.

Some of the investment is already benefiting Zhongshan, with the construction of an eight-lane bridge bringing a new highway to the city expected to be completed in 2023. It will reduce travel time between the city and the regional technology powerhouse of Shenzhen to 30 minutes from the current two hours.