Recently Chinese President Xi Jinping opened the world’s longest sea-crossing bridge (55 km) connecting Hong Kong, Macau, and Zhuhai city in mainland China.
However, the bridge is also being seen as a part of a multi-pronged push by China to exert greater control over Hong Kong, which returned from British to Chinese rule in 1997 amid promises to preserve the city's high degree of autonomy and individual freedoms denied in mainland China.
The bridge was first proposed in the late 1980s, but it was opposed at the time by Hong Kong’s British colonial government, which was wary of development that might draw the city closer to Communist China.
The "Greater Bay Area" refers to the Chinese government's scheme to link the cities of Hong Kong, Macau, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Zhongshan, Dongguan, Huizhou, Jiangmen, and Zhaoqing into an integrated economic and business hub.
Asia Economic Integration Report
Asia Development Bank has released Asia Economic Integration Report (AEIR) 2018 which is released annually since 2015.
The Asian Economic Integration Report reviews the progress of Asian governments’ efforts to integrate their economies and improve cooperation on a variety of levels.
In 2017, ADB released its Asia-Pacific Regional Cooperation and Integration Index (ARCII) as a part of AEIR for first time.
ARCII gauge the degree of regional cooperation and integration in Asia and the Pacific.
According to the AEIR 2018, Asia continued as the largest source of international migrants in 2017. Most of the international migrants in 2017 were from India(17 million), followed by China (10 million) and Bangladesh (7.5 million).
