fast - particularly retailing and banking. A regional service hierarchy is, however, emerging with Hong Kong at the apex. Although Hong Kong will be able to supply any deficiencies in the provincial financial services sector, this will be costly it must be presumed that the Chinese will attempt to provide these services for themselves. Hong Kong is however likely to retain and expand its "world city” functions in the field of global finance and as a headquarters for industries with processing functions scattered throughout the world. The Consultants cannot see Guangdong competing in this field.
3.12 Tourism may also grow fast, but mainly because of business visitors and newly created recreation facilities such as golf courses which have been developed for high income city residents. Further development of the tourist industry is, however, less certain. By the standards of the region, Guangdong has few attractions. There is little that is spectacular or beautiful the province's pollution problems are also not conducive to a rapid expansion of these facilities. There may, however, be much scope for developing the domestic market.
3.13 Major reforms are still required in the housing sector. Most homes are still supplied by employers and there is, consequently, little incentive for housing standards to be raised.
3.3
Spatial Development
Recent Past Trends
3.14 The pace of urban development in the 1980s throughout the Pearl River Delta has been remarkable. The increase in non-agricultural employment at the expense of agricultural employment has been universal. In the short period from 1982 to 1990 a number of counties changed from predominantly agricultural to substantially non-agricultural economies and many others are on the brink of doing
So.
3.15 This process has been most marked between the two major service centre activity poles of Hong Kong and Guangzhou, from Shenzhen through Baoan to Dongguan which increased their population by 1.9 million (of which 1.7 million is estimated to be due to net inward migration) and their non-agricultural employment by 1.6 million. While the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone was undoubtedly the catalyst for this development, the increase in non-agricultural employment was approximately equal in all three areas, indicating the importance of the contributions
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of Dongguan and Baoan to the rapid, almost continuous urbanisation of the east littoral of the Pearl River. Urban development in Baoan County is now spreading in a more dispersed pattern to the north of Shenzhen and along the road to Huizhou. As the county has now been incorporated into the Special Economic Zone, this is likely to continue.
3.16 In quantitative terms, growth and change elsewhere have been less spectacular but are still significant, especially in the contiguous area formed by Foshan, Nanhai and Shunde immediately to the west and south-west of Guangzhou, where non- agricultural employment is now in excess of 60 per cent, of which a substantial proportion is in manufacturing.
3.17 Zhuhai, although expanding fast from a small base, remains a fairly isolated area of urbanisation on the southern tip of the west bank of the Pearl River. Of all the central areas of the delta, Zhongshan has shown the least change. Agriculture is still the most important sector and urbanisation has been largely confined to a modest radial extension from the urban
core.
Urban Hierarchy
3.18 In 1990, Guangzhou had the highest proportion of employment in the service sector (46 per cent) with almost one million workers. It is unquestionably the most important centre in the region. This is unlikely to be challenged, but Shenzhen is emerging as the service centre second only to Guangzhou with fivefold increase in service employment to 285,000 between 1982 and 1990.
3.19 Other less important second order service centres are Foshan, Jiangmen and Zhuhai, and, more divorced from the main growth areas, at Zhaoqing and Huizhou. Zhongshan can only be classified as a third order centre and Dongguan, despite its fast rate of urbanisation, only warrants a fourth order classification.
3.20 The emerging hierarchy of urban centres is illustrated on Figure 3.1.
Emerging Patterns of Urbanisation
3.21 The main influence on further growth will be the momentum generated by the established and fast growing urban economies between Shenzhen and Guangzhou and those that are emerging to the west and south-west of Guangzhou.
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