Experts said that Shanghai and neighbouring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces need to have more co-operation instead of disorderly competition, in order to seek mutual benefits.

"Due to administrative barriers, the competition between cities in the delta region doesn't look like it will ease," said Chen Wei, chief expert of the Shanghai Regional Economy Study with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, in an interview with China Daily.

"Sometimes the competition is vicious and wastes resources."

He cited examples such as the overlapping construction of deep-water ports by Zhejiang Province and Shanghai, and the heated struggle for overseas investment among Shanghai's suburbs and neighbouring cities like Suzhou and Wuxi in Jiangsu Province.

Under the current administrative system, each city in the delta region seeks the fastest growth of its gross domestic product (GDP) in the shortest time possible.

Chen noted that the delta region needs to establish an overall administrative mechanism to co-ordinate regional development if it wants to position itself as a complete economic body.

"To achieve this, Shanghai should play a leading role by inviting local governments in the delta region to join such a mechanism," Chen said.

Zhou Muzhi, a senior economist at Japan's International Co-operation Agency, said 15 major cities in the Yangtze River Delta need to merge into a gigantic delta metropolis, in turn breaking the current administrative barriers when planning their economic strategies.

Zhou strongly advocated for pushing the regional integration in the delta area in 1999 after making an on-the-spot investigation in Jiangsu Province with a group of economists.

Zhou called on governmental organizations in the area to jointly establish a Shanghai-Nanjing (capital of Jiangsu Province) high-tech industry belt along the Yangtze River, so as to ease the vicious competition between Shanghai and Jiangsu Province in introducing overseas capital.

"Such a belt has basically emerged and cross-provincial planning on the area, instead of over-competition by reducing land prices, will greatly increase the area's attraction to overseas capital," said Zhou, who is also an associate professor at Tokyo Keizai University.

"They (governmental bodies) have realized the importance of the overall planning of the delta region, but no breakthroughs have been made so far."

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