Delta (PRD) area, comprising a cluster of cities in Guangdong Province, has overtaken Tokyo as the world’s largest urban area both in size and population, the World Bank said January 26th. The PRD, including nine cities of Guangdong, namely Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Foshan, Huizhou, Jiangmen and Zhao-qing, had 42 million inhabitants as of 2010, a population larger than that of Argentina, Canada or Malaysia, the bank said in a report on urbanization in East Asia. The PRD has been one of most economically dynamic regions of China since the launch of the reform and opening-up policy in 1979. By 2007, its GDP rose to US$448 billion, which made its economy about the size of Taiwan’s. The abundance of employment opportunities created a pool of wealthy, middle-income, professional consumers with an annual per capita income that puts them among China’s wealthiest. Shenzhen Daily |