Imagine, 11 years from now, a Hong Kong factory owner produces electronics gadgets in Shanghai's state-level Jinqiao export processing zone for clients in Europe and then settles the trade in yuan directly through banks in the city.
This scenario could come to fruition following the central government's anointment of Shanghai as a global hub for finance and shipping in 2020, with possible full convertibility of the yuan in a vision for the fast-growing city and the industrialising Yangtze River Delta region.
As the mainland's second international financial centre, in tandem with Hong Kong, Shanghai would facilitate the country's growing prominence on the global economic and political stage, but it would also catapult the two cities to a fresh level of competition.
The competition debate would escalate from a Mickey Mouse issue - a proposed Disneyland theme park in Shanghai - to the probable prospect of that city threatening Hong Kong as the gateway for foreign capital and the entrepot for the mainland.
The 2020 vision would also raise questions about the future of the Hong Kong dollar.
'Shanghai has got the gift it has longed for, for ages,' said Priscilla Lau Pui-king, an associate professor and associate head of the department of business studies at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and a Hong Kong representative at the National People's Congress, referring to a freely convertible yuan.