US development plans act as blueprint for China

China is drawing up plans to develop a regional economic powerhouse
that connects the mainland with Hong Kong and Macao, as part of the
Belt and Road Initiative.

Beijing says the ambitious Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area
project will leverage on the strength of the region, and will be the
most highly-populated bay area in the world, out-sizing that of San
Francisco and New York.

To get an idea of what China's vision might involve, our US
correspondent Liling Tan takes a look at two of the biggest bay area
economies in America.

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RNZ: http://www.fsnradionews.com/feeds/0628bayarea-pkg-lt-rnz.mp3


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TAKE VO
China's big plans to connect Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau into a
massive Bay Area economy will make this southern Chinese region among
the world's biggest city clusters.
Together, the eleven cities in the bay area are home to some 67
million people, have a combined GDP of one-point-three TRILLION US
dollars, and cover 56-thousand square kilometers.
So what would that look like? Some industry observers say it could
resemble the San Francisco Bay Area, made up of nine counties
connected by major waterways.

Darlene Chiu Bryant, Executive Director of ChinaSF, San Francisco
Chamber of Commerce, Full Sot: "The Pearl River Delta connected to
Hong Kong has traditionally been the financial capital for China, and
definitely in the San Francisco Bay Area, we've been the West Coast
financial capital for many years./ In terms of innovation, San
Francisco, we have the Bay Area in terms of Silicon Valley and San
Francisco now is actually the center of innovation because now have
more than 2000 tech companies."

TAKE VO
But China's Bay Area project will be about three times as large as the
San Francisco Bay Area, generate nearly twice its GDP, and house
nearly eight times as many people.
What about the New York metropolitan area, with Manhattan at its heart
as the crossroads of the world?

Tom Wright, President, Regional Plan Association, Full Sot: "New York
City was built around this extraordinary natural harbor and has always
had this connection to commerce. But it's also as a city and
metropolitan region managed to reinvent itself. It was the finance
capital and it still is but in recent decades it's managed to become a
center… a magnet for tourism, for leisure, for venture capital, for
startups and technology, and the entire creative class… the industries
around media, publishing, film."

STANDUP ON LOCATION: I'm standing here by the southern-most point of
Manhattan, where you can get a snapshot of the metropolitan area. If
you follow me here, on this side, you can see over there Staten
Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City. But if you follow
me here past the Statue of Liberty and this fisherman, you'll see
those skyscrapers over there. That is in New Jersey, an entirely
different state from New York. In fact, the New York metropolitan area
is comprised of three different states. New York, New Jersey, and
Connecticut in the northeast.

TAKE VO
The Regional Plan Association is rolling out a new vision for the
tri-state area that covers more than 34 thousand square kilometers,
houses 23 million people, and generates more than 1.8 trillion dollars
a year. And it says both private and public sectors have equal parts
to play.

Tom Wright, President, Regional Plan Association, Full Sot: "To kind
of build out a strong regional economy requires the active
participation of the private sector, of the real estate community
that's going to build the housing and the commercial development, of
the environmental community that has been working very hard to protect
our watersheds and now has to think about the coastal communities and
what we're going to do with rising sea levels; with the equity
community that's concerned about the many communities that are not
participating in or benefiting from the economic growth that we have."

TAKE VO
And among the biggest challenges -- at least for this bay area economy
-- is how to connect historically competitive cities so they can
complement each other and leverage on their collective strengths.

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