THE Guangdong Provincial Development and Reform Commission recently released a development plan for the building of the Shenzhen metropolitan area, which includes Shenzhen, Dongguan, Huizhou, Heyuan and Shanwei cities, southcn.com reported.

The two other city clusters mentioned in the planning are the Guangzhou metropolitan area that includes Guangzhou, Foshan, Zhaoqing, Qingyuan, Yunfu and Shaoguan and the West Pearl River metropolitan area.

Chen Hongyu, an expert and former deputy president of Guangdong Provincial Party School, said that the building of a metropolitan area will not only enable big cities such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen to expand its influence but also speed up an integrated development of nearby cities such as Huizhou and Dongguan.

Chen said that Huizhou is an important partner to Shenzhen because Shenzhen needs more space to further develop itself and the win-win solutions can be achieved through cooperation on key projects and infrastructure.

Xiamen-Shenzhen High-speed Railway has shortened travel time among cities including Shenzhen, Huizhou and Shanwei.

In the future, it will only take half an hour to travel from Huizhou to cities including Guangzhou, Dongguan, Heyuan and Shanwei after the Ganzhou-Shenzhen and Guangzhou-Shantou high-speed railways are put into use.

Huizhou will also speed up construction of highways, the airport and port to increase its connectivity to surrounding cities, according to the report.

Huizhou launched projects to build a traffic network connecting seven counties and six surrounding cities to become a hub that connects western and northern regions of Guangdong Province.

The Shenzhen metropolitan area’s GDP last year exceeded 4,270 billion yuan (US$603.7 billion), accounting for 39.7 percent of Guangdong’s total GDP, the report said.

Ding Li, a researcher from the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences, suggested that businesses in the electronic information industry in Shenzhen and Huizhou can cooperate to contribute to the building of the metropolitan area.

(Wang Jingli)