CHINESE are renowned for having very high expectations of their children, and Anhui provincial leaders are no different when it comes to their small capital of Hefei.
Now that Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms are well established, Anhui officials have decided that it's about time for Hefei to grow up . . . and out.
At the Anhui People's Congress earlier this year, Governor Hui Liangyu set ambitious goals of doubling the city's population and its area by the year 2000 to turn it into a major metropolis. Industrial output was expected to rise from less than 30 billion yuan last year to 100 billion yuan.
But there is a question mark hanging over Hefei's planned 'great leap forward'. Will it help it to catch up with coastal cities, or leave it mired for decades to come in a host of problems of its own creation? Drive into downtown Hefei today and you will probably grind to a halt at the end of a long line of cars, motorcycles, taxis and trucks.
For the moment, those traffic jams are as much a symbol of the city's new-found economic vitality as its backwardness. Since 1992, when Beijing granted Hefei the same preferential policies enjoyed by coastal cities, the capital's gross national product has expanded by more than 30 per cent a year.
Trucks rattling in and out of the city carry products from local industries and township and village enterprises where output has ballooned by over 40 per cent and 70 per cent per year respectively.
Today's traffic bottlenecks also threaten to put a cap on future economic development, however. And they highlight the city's two major challenges: raising capital and building infrastructure.