ONE of the pictures taken by the Shenzhou V Spacecraft showed how China looked at night from outer space. Over the vast territory of 96 million square kilometres, spots of light were scattered in China's eastern and central regions but in the west, it was totally dark.

"Why was it taken at night? So the lights could be seen and show where there had been economic development," said Hua Min, director of the World Economy Research Institute of Fudan University as he presented the slide to an audience composed of scholars, governmental officials and entrepreneurs from 16 cities in the Yangtze Delta.

According to Hua, the picture vividly indicated the division in China's economic structure, the fast growth of the prosperous east and economic stagnation in the poorer central and western regions.

Unique advantages

To promote more co-ordinated development is today an important strategy that China's new government has vowed to realize.

As one of the areas leading China's industrialization, urbanization and internationalization, the Yangtze Delta Economic Circle at the mouth of the Yangtze River -covering Shanghai, the southern part of Jiangsu Province and the northern part of Zhejiang Province - has played an important role in China's economic resurgence.

Taking up 1.04 per cent of China's land area, this economic circle nevertheless supports 5.89 per cent of China's total population and its average GDP is three times the national average level.

"The Yangtze Delta has the best potentiality and most favourable conditions to build a well-off society in China," said Xu Changle from the East China Normal University's Academy of the Yangtze River Catchment Development.

As a way of breaking away from an agricultural economy and becoming an industrial society, a crucial element is the cost of transportation. "The geographical advantages that the Yangtze Delta was endowed with should not be neglected," said Fan Gang, the director of the National Economic Research Institute.

Historically, the area was brought into line with international best practice thanks to its open ports, which also left behind some business traditions. "In today's globalized world, these kinds of international contacts did have a special role in developing the economy and the Yangtze Delta has an advantage in seizing the opportunities of the global market in comparison to certain other parts of China," Fan said.

Moreover, in most coastal regions, such as Zhejiang Province, the planned economy was comparatively smaller than elsewhere, and, accordingly, the government could not intervene too much in the operations of local enterprises. This was also a prerequisite for the rapid development of the local private sector.

Unified economy

In spite of the great achievements that the Yangtze Delta Economic Circle has made, the area did not develop itself in an integrated way.

"Previously, the 16 cities seldom considered the mutual relationships between their individual development and the regional development," Xu said.

This, to some extent, caused the unharmonious development of this area at the end of the 20th century. "The most unfavourable element that is hindering the unified development of the Yangtze Delta lies in its administrative system," Xu said.

Serious local protectionism has made it hard to realize comprehensive regional plan and intensified the phenomenon of regional over-specialization in certain trades.

Sharing common natural resources and the same economic base over a long period of time, cities in the Yangtze Delta concentrated on the development of manufacturing industries. According to Xu, this common emphasis could eventually weaken the economic complementary between sub-regions and result in inefficiently overlapping activities.

"No one big city should be dependent on a single industry to support the livelihood of millions of people. It must be a diversified industrial structure," Hua said. "Leave it to the market and entrepreneurs to decide which kind of industry should be developed."

Up to now, cities in the Yangtze Delta have established a good reputation for "hardware" production but how to create an environment that would improve "software" development needs further consideration, especially in respect of reducing government involvement.

"The role the government plays is to eliminate obstacles for the sake of the market including the barriers caused by government administration itself," Fan said.

To establish a unified economy among the cities in the Yangtze Delta is part of a regional co-operative strategy with Shanghai as its centre.

Located in different parts of the Yangtze Delta, each city makes a different contribution to the strategy, but it was the economic capacity and influence of the hub city that decided its overall status. Xu said the enhancement Shanghai provided to the region was crucial to the whole economic zone.

Expo opportunity

In 2010, the World Expo will be held in Shanghai. However, "it is hard for Shanghai to receive 70 million visitors. The World Expo should not be simply confined to Shanghai, but the whole Yangtze Delta," said Zuo Xuejin, vice-president of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

The regional connection among the 16 cities was established naturally without any barriers and the cultures of all the cities were in a harmony. "World Expo is not only an exhibition activity but also a cultural activity," Zuo said. The Yangtze Delta was abundant in cultural and tourism resources, which could be used to enrich Expo activities.

As a developing country, it will be the first time that China holds such a world exhibition. "All 16 cities should be seen as entry points for the visitors flocking to Shanghai. Only by working together can the Expo slogan - Better City, Better Life - be realized," said Dai Liu, deputy director of the Shanghai World Expo Co-ordination Bureau.