page_title: Pearl River Delta
section_title: Location and demographics
hierarchical_section_title: Pearl River Delta / Location and demographics
caption_attribution_description: Map of Canton, Macau, and Hong Kong
context_page_description: The Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region is the low-lying area surrounding the Pearl River estuary, where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea. It is one of the most densely urbanized regions in the world, and is often considered a megacity. It is now the wealthiest region in South China and one of the wealthiest in the whole of China along with the Yangtze River Delta in East China and Jingjinji in North China. The region's economy is referred to as Pearl River Delta Economic Zone. It is also part of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area.
  The PRD is a megalopolis, with future development into a single mega metropolitan area, yet itself is at the southern end of a larger megalopolis running along the southern coast of China, which include metropolises such as Chaoshan, Zhangzhou-Xiamen, Quanzhou-Putian and Fuzhou. The nine largest cities of the PRD had a combined population of 57.15 million at the end of 2013, comprising 53.69% of the provincial population. According to the World Bank Group, the PRD has become the largest urban area in the world in both size and population.
context_section_description: As well as the delta itself, the term Pearl River Delta refers to the dense network of cities that covers nine prefectures of the province of Guangdong, namely Dongguan, Foshan, Guangzhou, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Shenzhen, Zhaoqing, Zhongshan and Zhuhai and the SARs of Hong Kong and Macau. The 2010/2011 State of the World Cities report, published by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, estimates the population of the delta region at 120 million people; it is rapidly urbanising.
  The eastern side of the PRD (Shenzhen, Dongguan), dominated by foreign capital, is the most developed economically. The western areas (Foshan, Zhuhai, Zhongshan, Jiangmen), dominated by local private capital, are open for development. New transport links between Hong Kong, Macau and Zhuhai in the PRD are expected to open up new areas for development, further integrate the cities, and facilitate trade within the region. The Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge, and the proposed Shenzhen–Zhongshan Bridge, currently in the planning phase, will be amongst the longest bridges in the world with a total length of approximately 50 km (31 mi) each.
  Until c. 1985, the PRD had been mainly dominated by farms and small rural villages, but after the economy was reformed and opened, a flood of investment turned it into the land's economic powerhouse. The PRD's startling growth was fueled by foreign investment coming largely from Hong Kong manufacturers that moved their operations into the PRD. In 2003, Hong Kong companies employed 11 million workers in their PRD operations. Lately there have been extreme labour shortages in the region due to runaway economic growth which caused wages to rise by about 20 to 30 percent in the past two years.
caption: An 1888 map of the mouth of the Pearl River Delta, showing the locations of Macau and Hong Kong
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