Imagine it is a beautiful clear day in Guangzhou and the year is 2015.
Businessmen are embarking on high-speed trains to Wuhan, Changsha, or as far as Xiamen; and while they keep their appointments, their wives spend time having high tea, having their hair done, or shopping.
Trendy day-trippers in Hong Kong jump aboard the newly-commissioned Hong Kong-Shenzhen-Guangzhou express rail trains and arrive in Guangzhou within 50 minutes. They hunt for the latest fashion on sale in local stores, before pausing for a freshly-brewed cappuccino at swanky pavement cafes.
Outside Guangzhou, in Panyu and Nansha, new industrial parks have sprung up. They have become home to car manufacturers and hi-tech product makers, as well as research and development companies.
'Guangzhou will have become a regional hub, catching up rapidly with Shanghai in terms of affluence and living standards,' said Dr Thomas Chan Man-hung, director of Hong Kong Polytechnic University's public policy research institute. 'By 2015, it will have played a key role in the province's metamorphosis.'
Policies outlined in the city's 12th five-year plan for 2011 to 2015 call for an industrial revolution in the Pearl River Delta to drive the 'factory of the world' up the technology and value chain, and to become a research and development hub.