Integration trumps regionalisation
With a further 100 million rural migrants set to move to cities by 2020, China faces huge challenges in coping with urbanisation. The previous strategy of building brand new metropolises has proved troublesome and the resulting “ghost” cities have failed to draw the investment required to provide jobs and justify construction costs.
The answer now appears to be the megalopolis, and recent announcements have signalled the government’s intention to push ahead with major integration projects. Perhaps the only city cluster to match the proposed Beijing megalopolis in scale, the Yangtze River Delta Economic Zone is made up of 16 cities and accounts for about a sixth of the country’s GDP. With Shanghai at its centre, the other cities in the region – including Nanjing, Suzhou and Ningbo – are being built up as hubs for specific manufacturing and technology industries. Five major railway lines are planned to increase the region’s physical infrastructure.
This may only be the start. In April, Premier Li Keqiang outlined an even more expansive vision for the region – an economic “super zone” for 600 million people, almost half of China’s population. Details remain scarce, but the project is intended to connect the Yangtze Delta economies with the Silk Road Economic Belt, China’s gateway to Central Asia and the West.
The Pearl River Delta, meanwhile, is arguably China’s post-Mao success story. With Hong Kong already a powerhouse of global finance and services, government backing has seen cities in Guangdong Province – such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen – develop around manufacturing and electronics in a “front shop, back factory” model. While more integrated than other clusters in China, there is now increased pressure to strengthen ties.
Rumours of a venture called “Turn the Pearl River Delta into One” emerged in 2011, with a reported 150 infrastructure projects being planned to connect transport, telecommunications and energy networks. Officials deny knowledge of the scheme, but there are signs that Guangdong’s smaller cities are being pulled into the orbit of larger ones. Last year, the leaders of Shenzhen, Dongguan and Huizhou signed an agreement to link their cities’ metro systems by 2020.
The coming decades are likely to see many other megalopolises develop in China, with state media reporting that there will be 32 completed by 2030. Among them, the Central Liaoning area is expected to transform into an eight-city, 28 million-person cluster centred around Shenyang.
Integration efforts in some of these areas remain at a comparatively embryonic stage, but while the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei megalopolis may be the most ambitious – and urgent – of the projects, the face of Chinese cities across the country is set to transform radically in the coming years and decades.