South China's Hengqin Port emerges as busiest Greater Bay Area gateway

The Hengqin Port in Zhuhai City, south China's Guangdong Province, had handled more than 100 million cross-border passenger trips since it was put into operation in August 2020, with the milestone reached by Friday afternoon, according to the Zhuhai General Station of Immigration Inspection.

The port had also processed 11.7 million inbound and outbound vehicle trips in less than six years, underscoring its emergence as one of the busiest hubs in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area city cluster in south China.

Located at the southern tip of Zhuhai and separated from Macao by a narrow stretch of water, Hengqin has become a core center for personnel exchanges, economic and trade cooperation, and livelihood integration between Guangdong and the neighboring Macao, as well as a vital gateway for the Guangdong-Macao In-Depth Cooperation Zone.

With increasingly convenient customs clearance procedures, more Macao residents are choosing to live, work and start up businesses in Hengqin, leading to a steady increase in cross-border travel.

Immigration procedures for both Zhuhai and Macao now require only a single facial recognition and fingerprint verification, cutting average clearance time to under 20 seconds.

"[The customs clearance] is incredibly fast. From queuing [at the checkpoints] to finishing [the exit-entry procedure], it feels like just ten seconds. For those of us running cross-border businesses, time means efficiency, and the changes at this port have really saved us a lot of time," said a Macao resident surnamed Lyu.

The streamlined clearance has boosted flows of people, goods, capital and information. Daily cross-border passenger trips have risen from some 20,000 at the beginning to around 100,000 today, with annual growth in passenger flow exceeding 40 percent.

"In the first quarter of this year, the Hengqin Port processed more than 9.22 million cross-border passenger trips and over 1.08 million vehicle crossings, up 31.7 percent and 46.5 percent year on year, respectively. Both passenger and motor vehicle flows continue to grow with strong momentum," said Zhang Xin, deputy head of the Border Inspection Division at the Hengqin Port.

South China's Hengqin Port emerges as busiest Greater Bay Area gateway

China and Greece launched their first joint archaeological project at the Chinese School of Classical Studies at Athens on Friday.

Located in western Greece, the Aggelokastro project marks the first time that Chinese archaeologists have participated in leading roles of an excavation project in a core region of Western civilization.

The project is an important part of systematic cooperation between the Greek Ministry of Culture and the Chinese School of Classical Studies at Athens, and has been approved as part of a five-year joint archaeological program.

Aetolia-Acarnania, where Aggelokastro is located, has been an important area for Greek archaeological studies since the 19th century.

"Within the Aetolia-Acarnania area during the Hellenistic period (323 BC-31 BC), that's around China's late Warring States Period to early Han Dynasty, an Aetolian League was formed, and there were extensive cultural exchanges across the Eurasian continent. Now we can say that the ruins were a significant small city-state at that time. It is also hoped that we could discover some clues of ancient long-distance trade," said Li Xinwei, head of the Chinese School of Classical Studies at Athens, which was founded in November 2024 as the first research institute on classical civilizations established in Greece by an Asian country.

China, Greece launch first joint archaeological project, seeking clues of ancient trade