Mark Ao and his partners moved into Inno Valley HQ - a startup park in Zhuhai's Hengqin New Area - on June 29, the day it opened.

What attracted the resident from the Macao Special Administrative Region was the start-up park's favorable atmosphere for new ideas rather than the financial support offered by the park.

A major base for Zhuhai-Macao cooperation, Inno Valley HQ is now home to 90 firms from Macao with registered capital totaling 45 million yuan ($6.97 million).

Hengqin New Area has played an increasingly dynamic role in Zhuhai's opening-up and its appeal has been further enhanced since it became a free trade zone in April.

Official statistics show that the new area had 10,825 registered enterprises including 460 foreign-funded ones by the end of August as compared to 384 in 2009, of which 19 were foreign-funded ones.

But Hengqin New Area is only one example of Zhuhai's development.

"Zhuhai is in the prime stage of development and the city is anticipating promising growth prospects over the next decade," said Jiang Ling, mayor of Zhuhai.

"Zhuhai is looking for more extensive international cooperation and will open wider to the world," he added.

Jiang said Zhuhai enjoys an important position as an international gateway to the western Pearl River Delta and unprecedented opportunities from the nation's strategy to create a 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

He said the completion of the bridge to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region late next year and the city's proximity to the South China Sea will attract more investors and high-caliber professionals, and help local enterprises go abroad.

Zhuhai's foreign trade averaged annual growth of 6.8 percent from 2011 to 2014, and its exports grew at 9.3 percent annually over the same period.

Zhuhai ranked fifth after Shenzhen, Shanghai, Suzhou and Dongguan on the 2014 list of China's top 100 foreign trade cities issued by the General Administration of Customs in August.

And it secured foreign direct investment of $6.41 billion in that period, with last year's figure standing at $1.93 billion.

Zhuhai's FDI in the first 10 months of this year was $1.8 billion, increasing 0.8 percent from a year ago.

The city had 12,080 foreign-funded projects by the end of last year including 42 funded by the world's top 500 companies.

Zhuhai secured massive capital input again for 28 new projects during the first Advanced Equipment Manufacturing Investment and Trade Symposium for the Western Pearl River Region, held in Zhuhai in August. Multinational and domestic giants including Fluor Corp from the US invested 35.46 billion yuan in several projects related to advanced equipment manufacturing.

The city also attracted a total investment of 111.2 billion yuan for 27 projects during a meeting of the world's Cantonese-speaking people early this month.

With respect to outbound investment, local companies set up 47 non-banking investment projects in 12 countries and regions abroad including the United States, India and Vietnam as well as Hong Kong in the first three quarters of this year, with their contractual investments totaling $900 million, a surge of 30 percent from the same period of 2014.

Even bigger deals were signed in October.

Zhuhai Port Holdings Group signed a 6.5-billion-yuan contract for constructing part of the Gwadar Port project in Pakistan. Huafa Group signed a contract worth 1 billion yuan with China Overseas Port Holdings to jointly build a 250,000-square-meter Chinese commodity trading center in Pakistan.

(China Daily 12/17/2015 page6)