It links Hong Kong, Macau, and Zhuhai in mainland China,

and it's one of the most ambitious engineering projects ever built.

It's not just about concrete and steel

it's about binding Hong Kong into the mainland

and accelerating the development of southern China.

This is a vital strategic project to further deepen China's reform programme

and improve the country's economic growth.

President Xi Jinping has a grand plan to transform this part of China into a greater Bay Area

That will be the third pole of economic growth alongside Beijing and Shanghai.

The bridge will open later this year alongside an 11 billion dollar high-speed rail link

connecting Hong Kong to the rest of China.

The Bay Area already has three of the world's top ten ports and three of Asia's busiest airports.

Next, investors want to see reforms to ease the movement of people, goods and capital across the border.

The scale of China's ambition is eye-popping.

The bay area is home to 11 different cities and nearly 70 million people.

If it was a country, it would be a member of the G20 with a trillion dollar economy

bigger than Indonesia, Mexico, and the Netherlands.

The goal is to attract entrepreneurs.

Like Hongkonger Joseph Tse, who set up a robotics company in Shenzhen.

Hong Kong, from a traditional financing (perspective), is very strong,

Since this is connected to the world and it's easy to contact to the investors

Yeah, right.

So Hong Kong is still a place that nobody can replace

Shengzhen is the developer's heaven.

Hardware, software. If you want to build something nice and quick.

You can personalize your own iPhone downstairs for (in) just two hours

But building an integrated economic zone across three political jurisdictions

is much more complicated than plugging chips into a circuit board.

The economic links between the Bay Area cities go back several decades

but further integration has been limited by Beijing's capital controls,

the great internet firewall, and travel restrictions.

As this government advert shows, to simply drive from Hong Kong to Macau over the new bridge,

you'll have to navigate a minefield of bureaucracy.

Many Hong Kongs fear that the political drive behind the project is to find them to the mainland,

eroding Hong Kong's democratic freedoms, which are already under threat.

But the business community says that unless Hongkongers can put aside their fears and

embrace Beijing's towering economic ambitions, the city will be left behind.

I think Hong Kong could be see(n) as

the superconnector for (the) Greater Bay Area

because of our legal structure, our excellent kind of communication and infrastructure technologies.

If not, we will be left behind, and then, we won't have any role to play.

Xi Jinping isn't going to let his plans be scuppered by the fears of Hong Kongers,

but overcoming the challenges,

from capital controls, to free movement of people, may yet prove a bridge too far.