INTRODUCTION

Yangtze River Delta region, covers a total of sixteen cities, namely, Shanghai City, eight cities in Jiangsu Province (Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Zhenjiang, Yangzhou, Taizhou and Nantong), and seven cities in Zhejiang Province (Hangzhou, Ningbo, Huzhou, Jiaxing, Shaoxing, Zhoushan and Taizhou). The region is located at the juncture zone of the Yangtze River and China's coastal regions with favourable natural condition and prominent locational advantages, which is the core of China's coastal and riverside “T”-shaped strategic axis region. The land has an area of 110,000 square kilometres, accounting for 1.1 per cent of the country, with 97 million resident population (about 6.3 per cent of the country) and 3.39 trillion regional GDP (about 18.6 per cent of the country) by the end of 2005. Moreover, the industrial scale, technology and brands of steel, petrochemicals, automobiles, and textiles and so on as well as urban development have obvious advantages in the country. Of the nation's economically strongest thirty-five cities, the Yangtze River Delta region accounts for ten; out of the nation's top hundred counties, the Yangtze River Delta region accounts for thirty-seven. More than 400 of the world's top 500 enterprises have settled in this region. Therefore, it can be said that Yangtze River Delta region is one of China's leading region with the fastest growth rate, highest degree of openness, superior investment environment and competitiveness. This region most likely will be the first Chinese region to be among the top regional economies in the world.

Rapid industrialization and urbanization lead to the region's tremendous changes in population, land use, as well as economic spatial structure and patterns. Globalization and localization have exerted the greatest impact on these spatial changes. However, taking into account the effects of globalization on regional development, scholars have called for the “globalizing” of regional development (Coe et al., 2004; Yeung 2005). Globalization and the dispersion of global capital have transformed core cities in developing countries into globalizing cities. They are often the most globalized places and the focus of foreign direct investment (FDI) in these countries, and more significantly, emerging nodes of the global economy (Wei and Leung 2005).