Greater Bay Area shows power of urban clusters

In February, the State Council, China's Cabinet, unveiled guidelines for developing the Greater Bay Area, covering nine cities in the Pearl River Delta region in Guangdong province plus the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions. Which shows that, while the rest of the world remains mired in a seemingly interminable debate over how to achieve inclusive and sustainable growth, China is working to deliver it.

According to China's long-term development strategy, the central government remains responsible for overall stability and national security. Against this background, lower-level governments, State-owned enterprises, and the private sector (including foreign companies) should compete to generate new ideas and establish best practices that can be applied more broadly.

In 2010, China identified three major urban clusters that would lead this process: the Pearl River Delta region (which later expanded to the GBA), the Yangtze River Delta region centered on Shanghai, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei cluster. Together, these regions are home to 300 million people, cover 400,000 square kilometers, and contribute $4.8 trillion, or more than 35 percent, to China's total GDP.