In a world still pulling apart at its seams, the Greater Bay Area (GBA) has just delivered something rare: a flawless, high-stakes demonstration that ambitious regional integration is not only possible, but already working.

When the sacred flame was extinguished amid a spectacular light show at Shenzhen’s waterfront venue on the evening of November 21, 2025, the medal tally was impressive. Yet history will likely remember not just the gold around athletes’ necks, but the far more valuable proof-of-concept that unfolded across these extraordinary days: the GBA, for the first time, functioned as a single, seamless organism across Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macau.

The logistics alone tell a story of unprecedented scale. With competitions across 34 major categories and 419 events, this represented the first time in National Games history that multiple special administrative regions jointly hosted a major comprehensive sporting event.

The economic signals were equally loud. Cross-border sponsorship packages, unthinkable even two years ago, saw brands treat the entire GBA as one market. Tourism authorities successfully launched “One Games, One Bay” multi-destination initiatives, based on the expectation that visitors now see the region as a single destination rather than eleven separate cities.

This was the first time Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macau jointly hosted China’s highest-level, largest-scale, and most influential comprehensive sporting event, with over 9,000 participants crossing borders 3, making it an important milestone in the GBA development.

The original preview asked whether the Games would be the “grinding-in” the GBA desperately needed. The answer, delivered with quiet confidence over these past two weeks, was an unequivocal yes.

In an era when much of the world is building walls, the GBA just ran a masterclass in tearing them down.