From the ‘Workshop of the World’ to an emerging global city-region: Restructuring of the Pearl River Delta in the advanced services economy

For a long time, China’s economic growth and urbanization are recognized as a development outcome of its astonishing manufacturing industries. However, this conventional wisdom is increasingly challenged by the rapid growth of services, especially advanced services, in the country in recent years. The rise of advanced services is leading to a new wave of economic and urban transitions in China. This study explores the development implications of the advanced services economy for Chinese cities and regions using one of the most archetypical manufacturing city-regions in the country- the Pearl River Delta (PRD). It aims to understand how this ‘workshop of the world’ is being restructured by advanced service activities under the conditions of contemporary globalization, and how this process is shaped by the region’s special economic, political, institutional and cultural contexts. Multiple data and methods, including both quantitative and qualitative ones, are employed to explore different research questions. The study contributes to three key issues (debates) that revolve around the development implications of the advanced services economy in the urban and regional context: a) the impacts of advanced services on the spatial transformations of city-regions, b) the global and local dynamics that contribute to urban transitions in the new economy, and c) the challenges to urban policy and planning presented by such transitions.