Regional integration forges ahead

Chen Yin, a vice-mayor of Shanghai, is the first president of the council. Senior officials, academics and business entrepreneurs who will help with planning are among its members.

Xu Lin, a council member and chair of the US-China Green Fund, said the challenge of making institutional reforms in an area as large as the Yangtze River Delta is enormous.

Council member Shen Kunrong, dean of the Business School at Nanjing University, said that integration should break administrative borders and explore coordinated governance across the region.

Six months after its establishment, the demonstration zone has set a cross-border standard for environmental protection and enforcement, and is building a shared data platform for environmental monitoring.

Urban planning for the zone is poised to become the first in China to straddle different provinces while having singular administrative and legal authority. The plan is in the final stages of development, according to the demonstration zone's executive committee.

Thirty-three infrastructure, environmental protection and public service projects are also underway with the possible participation of companies such as Huawei, Alibaba, and PricewaterhouseCoopers, the committee said.

In December, the State Council issued the outline plan for Yangtze River Delta integration, setting the development principles and targets for 2025.

The outline specifies a number of targets in five areas: urban-rural coordinated development; scientific and technological innovation; infrastructure linkage; and environmental protection and social welfare.

By 2025, the income ratio between urban and rural residents in the center of the region should be lower than 2.2 to 1, and the urbanization rate should be 70 percent, according to the outline.

Research and development investment should constitute 3 percent of the region's total GDP and the density of the railway network should reach 507 km per 10,000 sq km. The coverage of 5G signal communication should reach 80 percent of the delta by then.

The outline became a hot topic during the annual sessions of the provincial and municipal people's congresses and political advisory bodies in January.

Last month, all three provinces and Shanghai had announced their implementation plans based on the outline, while the Ministry of Transport published its 2025 construction plans for major railways and highways in the delta.

Yangtze River Delta integration has also drawn the attention of NPC deputies.

Wang Qin, an NPC deputy from Jiangsu, told the local online media outlet Jiaohuidian he was very encouraged that the outline and implementation plan emphasized research and innovation.

Wang, also director of Jiangsu's Science and Technology Department, said he had surveyed many companies and industrial parks in the past year to gauge their experiences and look at models that could guide the building of an innovative community in the Yangtze River Delta.

He said he would urge more scientific cooperation platforms in the region and suggest Jiangsu's manufacturing sector, the province's leading industry, leverage its resources to make technological breakthroughs.

Cui Yu, an NPC deputy from Shanghai and chair of City Commercial Banks Clearing, told Jiefang Daily newspaper that she would propose changes to the interbank clearing system in the Yangtze River Delta region.

"Right now, the clearing service in different provinces doesn't have a unified system. I will suggest strengthening integration of the financial infrastructure to make payment clearing in the region work just as it does in a single city," she said.