South China's Guangdong Province, one of the nation's key economic powerhouses, officially flagged off the Pearl River Delta region reform and development planning program over the weekend.

The program aims to achieve a GDP of 3.15 trillion yuan (US$460 billion) within the region this year, 4 trillion yuan by 2012 and 7.25 trillion yuan by 2020.

At the launch, Huang Huahua, provincial governor of Guangdong, said that the program would be carried out in three stages.

"Guangdong will do its utmost to overcome the negative influence of the global financial crisis," he said.

The province will encourage the regional integration of social and economic development among different cities in the delta region and at least three economic circles are expected to take shape by 2020.

The three circles would comprise Guangzhou, Foshan and Zhaoqing; Shenzhen, Dongguan and Huizhou; Zhuhai, Zhongshan and Jiangmen.

He said that the province will step up efforts to achieve a change in development pattern by evolving self-innovative industry and upgrading industrial structure, while boosting the transfer of labor-intensive industries in the delta region to less developed regions and transferring labor forces from the agricultural to the manufacturing sector as well as from the rural area to the delta region.

The province will also forge an even closer tie with Hong Kong, aiming to achieve major breakthroughs in cooperation in finance, tourism, design and innovation. "The implementation of the program entails good coordination among different delta cities," noted Ren Jiantao, professor of public administration with Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-sen University.

"Implementation of the massive program means much more than the generosity shown, vows taken or slogans uttered by the governments in different cities."

(China Daily April 14, 2009)