Shenzhen will map out a plan to become an international metropolis in Guangdong Province, a senior city government official said Monday.

Tang Jie, secretary-general of the Shenzhen municipal government, made the remarks at a Guangzhou seminar, where he refuted rumors that the special economic zone was seeking to become a municipality to be directly administered by the central government like Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing.

The Seminar on Building a Greater Pearl River Delta Economic Zone that opened yesterday attracted more than 20 senior government officials, experts and economists from Guangdong Province, Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions.

Economists and experts at the seminar advised the Guangdong provincial government to give top priority to building Shenzhen into an international metropolis as a twin city to Hong Kong.

To this end, Shenzhen and Hong Kong should develop a new co-operative method, said Niu Wenyuan, a senior economists from Chinese Academy of Science.

Meanwhile, many experts and economists advised the Guangdong government to create bigger cities in the Pearl River Delta area to further improve the region's economic strengths and competitiveness.

Guangdong's 21 prefecture-level cities can be merged into nine metropolises, said Chen Hongbo, an official in the Shenzhen municipal government.

(People’s Daily September 16, 2003)