Authorities are considering building two tunnels under the seabed to link the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone in Guangdong Province to the Macao Special Administrative Region.

Both areas are now conducting feasibility studies for the projects, an official of the Zhuhai Municipal Development and Reform Commission said Wednesday.

However, the Zhuhai and Macao governments had not reached any agreement, the official told the China Daily.

According to the Southern Metropolitan News, the tunnels would be 560 meters and 445 meters in length. One would be a pedestrian and sightseeing tunnel.

The tunnels would be a third entry-and-exit checkpoint in Zhuhai, helping ease the pressure at the Gongbei Checkpoint between Zhuhai and Macao, said Zhang Hongwei, an economist.

The Gongbei Checkpoint, which is crossed by between 40 million and 50 million people a year, has become the second largest land checkpoint on the Chinese mainland after the Luohu Checkpoint in Shenzhen. Luohu Checkpoint handles more than 100 million people a year.

As many as 300,000 people pass the checkpoint each day during peak periods, although it is designed to cope with only 200,000 people a day.

The number of people using the Gongbei Checkpoint would continue to gain momentum as more mainlanders are allowed to visit Hong Kong and Macao on solo tours, Zhang said.

The Zhuhai and Macao governments had decided to invest large sums of money to build a theme park along the mouth of the Haojiang River where the two tunnels were being planned.

Xiangzhou District in Zhuhai will spend up to 5 billion yuan (US$600 million) to transform the district’s Waizai area into a “Zhuhai Bund” in five to eight years.

The bund is expected to become a new tourist attraction, with shopping centers, restaurants, bars, fountains and other entertainment and leisure facilities, covering an area of more than 500,000 square meters.

(Shenzhen Daily December 11, 2004)