@e_flux wrote:
In the English-language edition of Spiegel Online, Bernhard Zand profiles China’s latest ambitious infrastructure project: integrating the megacities of the Pearl River Delta – including Shenzhen, Dongguan, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macao – into a massive economic region dubbed the “Greater Bay Area.” The project will not only involve the coordinated growth of these already massive metropolises. It will also require negotiating the different economic and political systems of, on the one hand, Hong Kong and Macao, and on the other, mainland China – a difficult prospect given the massive protests again Chinese encroachment happening in Hong Kong right now. Check out an excerpt from the article below.
Here, in the country’s south, is where China’s economic miracle began 40 years ago. Small towns became cities and cities became megacities. Some 16 million people lived in the region in 1980. Today, it’s home to more than 70 million who, in an area smaller than Lithuania, generate an economic output roughly equivalent to Russia. If the Pearl River Delta were an independent country, it would qualify for membership in the G-20 forum of the world’s largest economies.
But Beijing has even greater ambitions. In February, the Communist Party announced plans to expand the delta into a city of cities that will rival the economic might and modernity of the world’s major metropolises, like Tokyo, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. Indeed, that is where China drew inspiration for the name of the project: The Greater Bay Area.
Image via Spiegel Online.
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