Beijing: China plans to link up the capital with the nearby city of Tianjin and the neighbouring province of Hebei into a city that will be as big as Uruguay and have a population of 100 million people.
Chinas urbanisation programme is the foundation on which the countrys economic boom has been built, and the reason why analysts are not too worried about the overall picture of Chinese expansion amid falling growth rates.
The Shanghai Tower, about which we have written before in this column, is opening to the public soon after seven years of building and more than 2 billion outlay, and it looks down from its 632-metre height on a part of Shanghai that will receive special treatment as part of a new Free Trade Zone (FTZ).
Now there are plans afoot to link up the capital Beijing, the nearby port city of Tianjin and the neighbouring province of Hebei into a city that will be as big as Uruguay and have a population of 100 million people.