Like eager concubines trying to win their master's favours, cities in southeastern China are fighting for a slice of the pie as Beijing pushes its grand plan to foster greater economic ties across the Taiwan Strait.
The 'Straits West Coast Economic Development Zone', which aims to catapult the Haixi region - the coastal cities of Fujian province facing Taiwan - into an economic powerhouse, is at the centre of an infrastructure building frenzy that seeks to capitalise on direct links with Taiwan.
The Fujian cities of Fuzhou, Quanzhou, Xiamen and Zhangzhou are already ploughing hundreds of billions of yuan into rails, roads, ports, power plants, new business districts and industrial parks.
The race to have these facilities in place by 2012, the mid-term cornerstone for intensified cross-strait trade and financial co-operation, heightened last week when Fujian's neighbour, Guangdong province, revealed plans to develop and integrate its own eastern region with Haixi.
The opportunity could not have come at a better time for Guangdong. Hit by a slump in overseas demand, the export-reliant province wants a share of an expected jump in cross-strait trade.
Provincial party secretary Wang Yang has vowed to accelerate the integration of the sleepy east coast cities of Chaozhou, Jieyang, Shantou and Shanwei with Haixi.