Can real reform take root in Qianhai?

The pace of progress in converting Qianhai, an ambitious experimental zone in Shenzhen touted as the "Manhattan of the Pearl River Delta", is expected to pick up after Beijing approved its development blueprint last month.

But experts remain divided on whether Qianhai will meet its lofty goal of helping to transform today's China like the first special economic zones in Shenzhen and Zhuhai did 30 years ago.

Top-level support for the Qianhai project is not in doubt. President-in-waiting Xi Jinping made Qianhai a stop on his first tour after taking over as Communist Party general secretary late last year.

But questions remain as to whether political leaders in today's more prosperous nation share the drive and willingness to take a big gamble that their predecessors did in the 1980s.

Xi's trip in December was widely seen as a nod to the past - after all, his father, Xi Zhongxun , pioneered the special economic zones. The success of these SEZs in turn provided models for the changes under Deng Xiaoping that have driven China's economic reforms over the past 30 years.

When the younger Xi toured Qianhai, he was looking at a 15-square-kilometre strip of empty land. But he must have hoped that in the next decade or so, this could do for China what the little fishing village of Shenzhen did for the country three decades ago.